Of the Forest
by Cerastella
Summary: Life is made of infinite possibilities, infinite choices and infinite eventualities and sometimes it takes a thousand hands to reach out and grasp them. SI/OC
1. Chapter 1

**Of the Forest**

Chapter 1

 **Disclaimer: I own nothing of Naruto**

* * *

She wakes to the sound of screaming; the piercing, shrieking wails of a new-born, fresh faced and afraid of the new world. She wants to comfort the child, this tiny baby born helpless into the cold, but it's hard. Her body feels oddly sluggish and her brain seems to be having trouble computing, and even opening her eyes takes a disproportionate amount of effort. What greets her when she opens them is even stranger. The world is a kaleidoscopic mess of colours; it blurs and fuzzes around the edges and large distorted shapes move in and out of her vision in mismatched lumps.

She is briefly terrified that she is going blind.

But for some reason her mind can't seem to cling onto the thought and the accompanying worry, batting aside like an insect. In some part of her brain she finds this absently disturbing, but that too is swiftly dismissed.

The baby is still crying in the background, the screams softening to distressed blubbers and it gladdens her, she has always hated the sound of children crying. She cannot see it though, in the odd mixture of large, coloured blobs, there isn't one she can identify as a baby. Not that she can identify anything at all.

She feels cold, there is a stark chill in the air where it hits her naked skin, which is a shock and concerns her for a moment that she should be unclothed but once again, the worry vanishes. She tries to move her leaden limbs, the hope being that movement will warm her up, but she can't seem to manage more than a slight squirm which does nothing for her situation. Suddenly though, there is something warm and firm fitting around her body, the rough-smooth texture feeling oddly comforting against her skin. She feels herself be lifted, the distant blobs growing closer and is absently aware of being cradled. And isn't that strange? She hasn't been held in such a fashion since she was a babe herself but the hands (for she assumes they are hands) are so warm that she finds little complaint.

The crying has stopped now and is instead replaced by the faint murmuring babbles of voices. She can't hear them very well; the sounds are strangely loud and the language is nothing she can understand. The sounds are slightly more… _bitty_ than she's used to, shorter and little harsher but with a distinct rhythm that is so very foreign.

The hands place her down and new hands reach to cradle her against something warm and soft. There is a part of her that is utterly paralysed with fear by the apparent size of the hands against herself and their ability to manhandle her when she has no way of fighting back, but all that evaporates as she is hugged close to the warm, soft thing. There is a steady _thump-thump_ underneath her, like an ancient, primal drum beat. It's vibrates through her whole being with an inexplicable sense of _warm_ and _safe_ and _home_ and she feels herself become docile and sleepy. Her mind drifts further, enveloped by the softness next to her and the safeness that seems to come with it; it's a curious thing, familiar and strange all at once, but wonderful all the same. She closes her eyes as something warm and vaguely pink looking is pressed up against her mouth and by some strange instinct she latches on. The world narrows down around her around until only the comforting feel of being completely home exists and the part of her mind that is conscious slowly drifts away.

But before that one last thought finds its way to the surface of her mind…

… _Something is really wrong._

~~~*8*~~~

 _Her name is Josephine Baker and she is utterly normal._

 _She has a mother (Karen), a father (William) and two older brothers (Adam and Henry) and she loves them all dearly. She is one of the lucky few on planet Earth, gifted with a comfortable life through accident of birth and like most in her situation, barely even recognises the gift she has been given. She lives as most do: not too good and not too bad and barely making a mark on the fabric of things, just sort of living._

 _But Josephine is a dreamer._

 _She is born to a middle-class family who live in a housing estate on the outer edges of a large town. Her father has a decent job in the City and her mother is a part-time office worker for a car showroom ten minutes from where they live (although she assures everyone that she only does it out of boredom, it's not like they need the money or anything). She grows up comfortable and happy with her stable nuclear family and her neatly ordered world._

 _But Josephine has always wanted…_ more.

 _Her world is one of raindrop-splattered concrete and dull 1960s buildings pulled up in the post-war building boom. The sky is grey more-often-than-not, a dull monochrome that is not quite bright enough to be silver and it rains nine days out of ten. She grows up playing on the tarmac cul-de-sac outside her house with her brothers and the neighbourhood kids and starts school at the local Primary down the road. It's peaceful, it's content and it's boring._

 _She makes friends at her school, the kind of friendships all small children make: bonding over shared lunches and shared giggles, how gross boys are and how good they all are at skipping. Her days are filled with whimsical children's games, cotton-candy bright laughter and the endless optimism in a child's heart that bursts star-bright into the grey world around them._

 _She eats up Disney movies with a voracious hunger, their words and messages shaping her as she watches tales of love and magic and happy endings and she_ wants. _She looks at the screen and sees everything she dreams of in life: to be kind yet strong like her favourite princesses and to marry a handsome prince who will take her hand and lead her to her very own happy ever after (Mulan will always be her favourite though, she's beautiful and gentle but kicks butt too and_ still _gets her prince in the end)._

 _Josephine grows up and grows older and her teachers will tell her parents that she is_ such _an imaginative child; would be brilliant if she only pushed herself and her parents will half-heartedly try before life gets in the way. She wants more, but is ultimately content._

 _Disney becomes Harry Potter, becomes Lord of the Rings, becomes Star Wars. Her heroes change but the dream does not, now though she no longer wishes to be just the princess, she wants to be the protagonist of her own story. She wants to lead rebellions and slay dragons, she wants to dance among the stars and weave magic as easy as breathing. She tells herself that if she lived the lives of the characters she would do things differently: take advantage of an entire school of magic or dump the stupid vampire ponce and run off with his infinitely better brother._

 _Maybe it's a little selfish that she spends so much time living in imaginary worlds, whether her own or another's creation, and maybe it's a little self-centred -this desire to be the hero, but like everyone else living their dull cookie cutter lives she can't help but dream._

 _She studies hard at school, both Primary and Secondary and does well on her exams. Her brothers move on to university before her and her dad gets promoted. She travels and grows together with her family who have always been, and will always be, the most important people in her life and things are well._

 _Josephine makes friends, close, dear friends. Erica with her life and fire and strength, Molly, quiet and shy but with the filthiest sense of humour and Danielle who dreams as big as she does. They're a group, a unit and they promise to be together forever. While at school with them she has her first kiss, her first love and first heartbreak (looking back on it though, Alex was rather immature, and she did always hate the amount of gel he used on that stupid hairstyle) and while she knows she will never conquer castles or be a ninja or Shinigami like her favourite characters, she decides that she wants to make a mark on her own world in some way._

 _She goes to university to study politics; she figures that maybe she'll be able to make a difference someday, maybe one day it'll be her ideas that change the world (she hasn't worked out what those'll be yet, but it'll come). She studies and parties and has fun. Makes friends, gets stressed, gets a job, gets really stressed but things go fine. She still dreams, idly, in her spare time, still reads books, watches anime and lives adventure through the eyes of the characters._

 _But Josephine lives in the real world now, she has a flat with friends, a steady boyfriend, a graduate job at a swanky company in London and plans to enter the political field. She has days out her mum, discusses work with her dad and tells embarrassing stories at Adam's wedding._

 _Josephine's life may not be all that exiting, her world is still raindrop-splattered concrete and dull 1960s buildings but it's_ her _world. She's not a fanciful child anymore, full of stories with warrior maidens and handsome knights, but she's okay with that. She has ambitions (somewhat realistic ones now) and plans to make it work and the future stretches out ahead of her: bright and glimmering and unknown._

 _But one night, one drizzly night, sometime in November, but it could also easily be December, Josephine gets in the car to drive back from her Grandparents house in the country. The night is dark and roads are narrow and Josephine's head is filled with a thousand tiny concerns._

 _And she never sees that other car coming._

 _(High above the wreckage on that lonely country lane, a silent God sits and watches uncaring. It sees poor Josephine Baker, her life and dreams all the way back to when she was a squalling baby and thinks,_ yes, let's do something different. _)_

~~~*8*~~~

She spends the next unknowable amount of time slipping in and out of consciousness. The world is still blurry around her and she still can't move, but things slowly become clearer. The strange pinkish blobs that drift in and out of her vision solidify slightly into the vague outlines of people and the noises become more distinguishable as words.

But that presents a whole new series of problems.

Like what!? Giant people!? What the hell? Had she somehow shrunk after the accident? Is she in a coma? Is that what this is? And why are they all speaking a different language? Surely even if this was a weird coma dream, the people in her subconscious would speak English, it's not like she knows any other language apart from GCSE German. And that doesn't even begin to explain why her brain can't seem to focus or why sometimes she's conscious and other times her sense of self seems curiously absent.

The whole thing is scary and terrifying in a million different ways, a feeling of helplessness overwhelms her every time she tries to move but can't, every time she tries to speak but all that comes out are strange indistinguishable noises. Sometimes it feels like she can't breathe from the strength of her fear but then something in her mind whites out and she loses consciousness again.

The other thing she stresses over (besides pretty much this entire situation) is the strange crawling feeling that writhes under her skin. It feels like a hundred tiny bolts of electricity are slithering through her veins and thrumming like a hummingbird's heartbeat. It's like a persistent itch that she can't seem to scratch. It's not painful or anything, sometimes it's even pleasant, and sometimes when the giant people-blobs pick her up she can feel something in them too, humming just under the skin.

She wears herself out worrying most of the time, between the not moving, her brain's seemingly inability to function for longer than a few minutes, the giant people and the crawling feeling it's a wonder she's not a blubbering mess (that's not to say she isn't one, hooked up and drooling in some hospital bed). She also worries about her family, her boyfriend and her friends. Where are they in this mess? Had she been kidnapped or something?

(Are they all crowding around a hospital bed watching her unresponsive body struggling for every breath while she dreams a strange dream.)

She spends what feels to be a good deal of time cycling through this unhealthy spiral of despair, fading in and out, fixating on everything from her weak heavy body to the absence of anybody she knows. It creates a spiralling feeling, a whirling twist of stress that tightens like a noose the more she thinks on it. There is no distraction from what's inside her head, she can't move or see all that clearly and the lack of sensory information is slowly driving her mad. But the human brain can only spend so much time constantly stressed and alert before something gives, and so she settles into a weird state of placid acceptance. Her mind can't take all this fretting anymore and so just gives up; instead she begins to take note of what's going on around her with a sort of distant curiosity.

The first thing she notices are the people. There are two: a man and a woman, though others come and go. Both have long dark that the woman wears loose but the man has in a high bun on the top of his head, it reminds her a little of samurai films and some of the more fanciful anime she's watched (which is strange, but hardly the strangest thing). Their hair looks luscious and silky and feels incredibly smooth when it tickles her skin. The woman has grey eyes, a fierce, wintery silver that's liquid and soft and the man deep chestnut, the colour of wet earth and tree bark. Their skin is a healthy tan colour, what looks to be a mixture of natural pigmentation and hours in the sun and their eyes are a distinctly Asian almond shape.

They're a couple, that's obvious from the way they interact with each other. They move around each other like orbiting planets and their eyes are filled with a deep, infinite affection: constant and flowing as the sea. They remind of her parents, of Adam and his wife Melanie and her heart squeezes in yearning, hoping that someday someone will look at _her_ like that.

(Probably not soon though, she muses in the depths of her mind, her and Rajesh have been clashing for a while now and it's clear to anyone watching that their relationship is on its way out.)

The next thing she notices are the words. Most of them are pretty much gibberish to her, but as she listens more it becomes clearer and clearer that some of the words are familiar. It doesn't take long before she has a sudden epiphany and realises the language the man and woman are speaking is Japanese, there's only so many times she can listen to them greet each other with _ohayo_ and _okaeri_ before figuring it out. This makes absolutely _no_ sense though, because she knows only the bare minimum of Japanese, just words she's picked up here and there from anime she's watched, so how would the people in her coma dream speak fluent Japanese?

But from listening to the couple carefully when she can, she's managed to work out their names: the man is Hiroto and the woman, Aiko, although the other name they mention a lot (and strangely, usually in her direction) is Moriko, as to who this 'Moriko' is, she has no idea, but she seems pretty important.

Her surroundings are also somewhat fascinating. She's not in a hospital, that's for sure, if anything it looks more like somebody's house -probably Hiroto and Aiko's all things considered- and it's a rather curious one too. The house itself, from what's she's seen when one of the couple picks her up and takes her places, appears to be an odd mixture of traditional Japanese and modern Western. The doors are sliding shoji doors made of an elegant dark wood and the floors are covered in tatami mats. The walls are lighter shade of wood than the doors but are decorated with tasteful pieces of Asian style art and calligraphy. By contrast however, the beds are average western beds and the kitchen looks fairly modern too.

Though there is this odd symbol that pops up in just about every room of the house, it has a kind of glancing familiarity, like she knows what it is right in the corner of her mind but every time she comes close to figuring it out she forgets. It's a long horizontal line intersected in the middle by a shorter, vertical one with two c-shaped curves facing outwards, a smaller one inside a larger one, at either end.

It frustrates her a great deal that she can't seem to work out where she's seen that same symbol before, the last thing she wants on top of this mess is to lose her memory too. That would be devastating on a whole other level, so her mind carefully avoids that train of thought out of pure self-preservation.

In the end, she has come to regard her entire situation with a detached sort of apathy, treating the whole thing as a kind of temporary fantasy the universe has deemed it necessary she put up with for however long it wants to torture her for. No one has hurt her and she isn't in any pain, the sparking under her skin continues to be mildly unnerving but it's hardly the greatest of her worries. So, for the time being, she exists in a state of flux, forcing herself to take the whole situation in rationally until, hopefully, she wakes.

It doesn't take long for her carefully constructed calm to shatter.

~~~*8*~~~

It begins as most moments do in this strange new reality: with the ceiling.

After what could anything from a second to a day, she claws her way back to consciousness and opens her eyes to stare up above her. Blinkingly slowly, she sighs internally as she is greeted by the blurry slats of Hiroto and Aiko's wooden ceiling. It's nothing special, just a bland, flat brown but it always evokes a confusing twist of emotions within her. There's confusion, fear and a soul aching tiredness, because the ceiling means that she's still _here_ , but also comfort because at least no one moved her while she was absent.

Recently, she's been using the ceiling as a sort of measure for how her eyes are progressing, in the beginning the best she could do was recognise that it was there: no colours, no depth perception, nothing. Now, after some unquantifiable amount of time, she can tell it's a mahogany coloured and a good several metres above her, frustratingly though, she still can't make out the individual boards.

Her vision is returning slowly but surely and she has regained the ability to focus on objects close to her. It had been the most terrifying thing waking up that second time and realising that she was, for all intents and purposes, blind. She'd never known how much she'd relied on sight until that moment. The world had just been a dizzying array of swirling colours and movement, not a single spec of clarity amongst the blur. It reassures her more than anything to know that she will eventually be able to see clearly again.

After noting little to no change in the blurry mass of brown that is the ceiling, she begins the next part of the little routine she's established for herself: movement.

Unfortunately, progress on that front had been slower going. Her limbs are heavy and weak and when she tries to move her head, she can feel every metric tonne of atmosphere pressing down on it. After what feels like an eternity of trying every time she wakes, she can only just about twist it from side to side, which is completely useless when her vision is so impaired. As for other types of movement, she can clench her fists, wriggle her toes and just about move her limbs a little. But all that pales in comparison to what she _wants_ to achieve.

She's so very _tired_ of lying on her back like an invalid, or being carried around in the arms of strangers whom she can barely understand; it's ridiculous, disturbing and more than a little demeaning. She's never been the most active of people, but even she needs to move sometimes.

Biting back another sigh at the thought of this newest failure, she scrunches her face in effort and tries to lift her head. Predictably, she is met with little success when all at once her skull is made of lead and she grunts in pure frustration when she can't even manage a centimetre off the mattress. Growling under her breath, she feels even more irritated when all that comes out is a pitiful little whine (because yeah, she's got no teeth too and hadn't that been fun to agonise over when she'd worked that one out?) and she clenches her weak fists in anger, slamming them against the bed with as much force as she can muster. It isn't much all things considered, but she delights rather too much in what little movement she can manage. She scowls up at the stupid ceiling, it's pathetic.

Regrettably though, the muted thump of her fists hitting the mattress and her all her groaning had attracted the attention of Aiko, who'd been sitting in the corner of the room, just outside her limited range of vision.

She jolts in shock when the women's large, smiling face enters her vision and feels a burst of annoyance at realising that her movement time is over. She never attempts to move more when anyone ese is around, for all she knows, the giant people are only nice to her because they don't know she's aware.

The woman's silken locks of her hair spill down onto the bed to rest either side of her head and she can just make out the bright gleam of her grey eyes as she smiles. The woman peers down at her with so much unadulterated love and affection in her steely depths that she feels a little uncomfortable at being on the receiving end of it. The only people who've ever looked at her like that are her family and Aiko is definitely not one of them.

" _Moriko-chan! Kesa wa dōdeshita ka?"_ Aiko asks down in her soft, sing-song voice, reaching to pick her up.

She squirms futilely to try and avoid Aiko's reaching arms, but her immobile body is useless and the giant woman lifts her up with ease. She feels like screaming when her head lolls back pathetically under its own weight; her face must have changed to reflect her displeasure because Aiko chuffs a laugh and knocks her cheek with a finger affectionately, _"Genkidzukeru,"_ she murmurs with a smile, switching to cradle her vulnerable body like a baby and support her heavy head with one arm.

She glares mutinously up at the woman, all at once resentful of the situation and Aiko by extension, but the woman merely smiles sweetly at her and moves to walk out the room.

Aiko carries her through the house humming under her breath and the area around her becomes a messy blur of brown. Occasionally, she catches a hazy glimpse of the strangely familiar symbol in amongst the earthen tones, but her eyes are too weak to tell. Messy smudges of light and colour tell her when they pass a window and the slight change in shades and depth when they pass a door. From where Aiko supports her head she has a slightly better view of the world around her than she would have if she were to support herself so she stubbornly tries to take everything in, as much as she dislikes being carried.

She catches something on the wall out of the corner of her eye and her whole body freezes.

 _No._

Aiko must have noticed because she stops suddenly, " _Nani?"_ she asks quietly and peers down curiously, her eyes following hers to find what has caught her attention. But she is too enthralled and terrified by the weak image to notice as she strains to make it out, her mind rushing forward at a million miles an hour.

Aiko sees what she's looking at and lets out a pleased hum that she can feel vibrating next to her ear, " _Sore wa kagamidesu, Moriko-chan, sore wa anata no hansha o shimesu,"_ she says, bouncing her a little in her arms, " _Sore wa okāsandesu, sore wa anatadesu,"_ she adds, nodding as she walks closer to the thing on the wall.

Right in front of it now, she can make out _exactly_ what the thing is and she struggles to contain the blind panic threading through her limbs.

 _No, nononono! This cannot be happening!_

There, on the wall, is a fuzzy image of a woman holding a baby. The woman is relatively tall with long, brunette hair and shining silver eyes while the baby in her arms is a small, scrunched thing with dark eyes that are almost its entire face. The baby's skin has the slightest of olive tints to it and on its head, is a faint dusting of chestnut hair falling tightly over its head like downy fur. Its tiny body is dressed in little green baby clothes decorated with tiny leaves and on its feet, are cutsey baby socks.

But that's not the scary thing, that's not the thing that causes faint shivers to wrack her weak form and the dancing-itching thing under her skin to writhe in agitation.

No.

What causes that is the look of fear and recognition in the baby's dark eyes, the odd glint of intelligence shining within infant irises. What causes that is how when Aiko bounces her, the woman in the image bounces the baby too; when Aiko steps closer to the image, the image steps closer too.

 _No, this isn't real! This isn't real!_

She blinks, the baby blinks.

She summons up all the strength she can in her arms and reaches out a feeble limb, the baby in the image slowly raises a tiny arm to reach out an equally small hand, complete with five little fingers.

 _Oh my god,_ she thinks.

Before promptly passing out.


	2. Chapter 2

**Of the Forest**

Chapter 2

A/N:Thanks to anyone who read the first chapter, this one is a bit introspective but it's just to set the scene and the others will have more action I promise! I wasn't panning to update so soon and it will rarely (if ever) happen again, I just got kinda carried away writing this. I apologise for any mistakes/bad grammar, I try and check it as best I can but I'm bound to miss stuff, comments and criticisms welcome!

 **Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto**

* * *

She wakes up a little later with an impending sense of doom hanging over her head like a heavy shroud. Her mind is woozy with what she supposes is sleep (although she can never be too sure these days) and she struggles to remember what happened before her consciousness faded out again. With a tired sort of frustration, she opens her useless eyes to stare up at that bland, ever-present ceiling and feels all the reassurance/anger/irritation that comes with it until...

 _Fuck_

It all comes back to her and her mind screeches to a sudden halt.

 _No._

 _No. Way._

She feels like screaming, like breaking something into tiny shattered pieces and setting it on fire out of anger and some confusing emotion she cannot name. _This cannot be happening_ , she tells herself, but her traitorous mind seems to disagree and it summons up that damning image as proof that apparently, _it can_ and she wants to hit something.

The woman with the almond eyes and the long brown hair; the baby with the small, wrinkly face and big brown (aware) eyes.

The baby had moved when she had, the woman when Aiko had.

She cannot be that baby. _It makes no sense_. She looks nothing like the infant she saw in what she now realises was a mirror, her hair is a ginger frazzled mess and her eyes are a watery blue, not the large doe eyes of the baby or the small tuft of brown on its head. That's not even getting into the whole _she's a fully grown adult_ and fully grown adults don't just _turn into infants._

Unfortunately though, it explains a lot: her inexplicable near blindness, the weakness in her body and the lack of any teeth, the fact she can no longer make any noises that resemble words and the strange blackouts she has. The mind of a small child is not developed enough to support the thought processes of an adult; the neurons are not fully connected and the brain is still growing. She takes a moment to offer up thanks to whatever god is listening that the blackouts have spared her much of the indignity of apparently _being_ _a baby_ , she hasn't been forced to drink from some woman's boob or forfeit control of her bowels. But quickly takes any gratitude back because _what the hell!? A baby!?_

She has no idea how this could have happened, well scratch that, _she does_ , but the idea is just too insane to really contemplate. It's the sort of thing that only happens to story characters, the sort of crazy that only pops up in fantasy, but well, it's the only rational (ha, as if anything about this is rational) explanation that makes any sort of sense.

The last thing she remembers is the accident, the sensation of being hit by something heavy and huge and all the force that entails, of being thrown forward at startling speeds before

Blackness

The only logical explanation she can come up with to explain the entire situation is that she, well, _died._

But no.

Just _no._

She does not want to go down that route, that route comes with the realisation that everything she knew from before was lost, that everything she _was_ from before was lost; her friends, her family, her sense of self, her _name_. It meant that Josephine Baker and all that she was, could be or will be was _nothing_ now, nothing but a battered body, a headstone and a fading memory that would grow old and forgotten. Call her self-centred, but the idea of everything she was becoming essentially _meaningless_ chills her to the bone. She had so many plans, so many things she wanted to do and be; but now, now, none of that matters.

She stares up at the dark ceiling and feels herself slipping. She wants out, she wants this to be a dream. She wants someone to step in and cry _Gotcha!_ and for this all to be one massive misunderstanding. She wants to hear English in her ears and to see her face - _her real face-_ and all its flaws staring back at her in the mirror and not some quasi-Asian imposter baby. She wants her mum, she wants her dad, she wants Adam's terrible jokes and Henry's sly wit, she wants Danielle to gush over the latest Marvel film and Erica to prattle on about her gymnastics team.

She wants the world to be normal again.

But that's impossible and with every passing moment her brain compiles more evidence to support the being dead theory and _it's not fair!_ Why her anyway? Why did she deserve to die, what had she done to deserve a lonely, meaningless death on a bland country road somewhere in Derbyshire?

Maybe it's not that though. Maybe it's not what she had done, but what she _hadn't._ Maybe it's because she'd been wholly unremarkable her entire life and done absolutely _nothing_ with the opportunities and privileges that she'd had handed to her on a plate. Her home had been so far away from all the problems in the world: cushy and sheltered; while woman out there her age had been fighting for their lives and rights she'd been overly concerned with whether or not she'd ever amount to something, her own future and her own tiny problems.

It probably wasn't any of that though, she thinks with a self-deprecating snort, that's just her own vanity kicking in. It probably had nothing to do with her, she had been utterly unimportant in the fabric of things, just a miniscule collection of atoms in a universe full of them.

So

Dead

Right, she can live ( _ha!_ ) with that.

 _(But she can't because inside she's screamingscreamingscreaming and none of this makes any sense)_

But that brings her to the next issue: being a baby.

Now she's smart enough to acknowledge that this is most likely reincarnation which _oh my god she's been reincarnated!_ And she takes a moment to appreciate the momentousness of this, the fact that she now knows the answer to a question that has plagued humanity since the dawn of time. That her, Josephine Baker, (although that's probably not her name now, is it?) the normalest, most average person ever, now possessed the answer to one of life's greatest mysteries. The next time she sees a Hindu or a Buddhist or really anyone who subscribes to reincarnation she's going to give them a round of applause for being right all along, before punching them in the face for the same reason.

It's not all that surprising though really, that this is what happens after death. Pretty much every belief system from the ancient Celts of Europe to the ancient Chinese and beyond holds rebirth as a central part of its doctrine. What confuses her is why she remembers though, she's pretty sure the slate should've been wiped clean when she died, to avoid _this exact situation_. Either someone up there is having a great joke at the expense of her sanity or this is just some massive fluke in the universe, a tiny quibble in the natural order of the world.

She supposes she should be angry about this, and she will be -later- but for now she's forcefully shunting all her emotions to the side to avoid dealing with the huge wave of _PANIC!_ threatening to overwhelm her.

The other victims in all of this, she supposes, are Hiroto and Aiko. That young, handsome couple with so much unconditional _love_ in their eyes when they look at this strange, baby shaped lump of skin she's inhabiting. They're obviously the parents of this body and her heart goes out to them because they clearly love their young daughter, the life they've created together, but not _her._ They don't know her, she's a stranger in the body of their baby, a mind that doesn't belong. In some ways, she's _stolen_ their daughter from them: stolen all the experiences and joy all parents want with their children. Her firsts won't be their firsts; she has some twenty years of life in her head before all of this.

 _God_ , they're probably not that much older than her.

They've most likely done _nothing_ to deserve this, and yet here they are, devoting love and care to an imposter who stole their baby and probably will never see them as her parents.

Because they're not

They're not her parents.

Her parents are William and Karen Baker, accountant and part time office worker from Derbyshire, England, not Hiroto and Aiko Something from _somewhere-that-seems-like-but-maybe-isn't_ Japan. And they will forever be her parents, the people that raised her and taught her to be who she is. The people who _she will never see again_.

It hits her then, with the force of a tsunami. No, not a tsunami, a fucking supernova, exploding outwards with a force of five thousand _billion_ yottatons. All the panic and pain she's been barely holding back. The heart-rending knowledge that she'll never see her family and friends again, that they are _lost_ to her now, that all she must be to them is a broken empty corpse.

It _hurts_ , it hurts more than anything: more than thinking she's blind or paralysed, more than the thought of being trapped in a coma, at least there's a chance then. Now she has nothing, nothing is familiar, not even her body not even her name. She has no one to lean on here, no one to seek comfort in because all this is _wrongwrongwrong_ and this life isn't _hershershers_ and the walls in her mind close in on her because now she has _nothing_.

She has lost it all, everyone she ever cared for, everyone she ever loved, every experience she never had and the future she reached out for and wanted. It all seems futile now, eighteen years of studying and working and trying for a life she will never get to live, years and experiences wasted, plans that mean _nothing_ now.

And she grieves.

She grieves for herself: the seventy years plus she expected to get but didn't, the life and a thousand innocent, cherished moments that won't happen now, for her friends and family, for the person they've lost and her poor parents, forced to bury their youngest. She grieves for Hiroto and Aiko who wanted a child but got a _her,_ who _lovelovelove_ their baby but will hate her and despise her when they realise that there isn't a baby in this skin, but an adult, fully grown and _grieving_ that can't be their child.

And she _screams,_ a fierce primal yell of such immeasurable pain as the world comes down around her, screams harder when all she gets is the wailing cry of a baby. She hears soft thudding footsteps as Hiroto or Aiko rush towards her ( _not her, their_ baby) but all she can do is scream.

~~*8*~~

It carries on like this for both more and less time than she knows. Every time she wakes up she screams; screams, screams, screams, so loud and violently that her infant throat becomes scratchy and painful but she doesn't care. Every time she opens her eyes and sees that _bloody ceiling_ she screams this body's lungs out until she blacks out from the force of her emotions. She gains reprieve in the void-like depths of her psyche when that happens, but it is never long until she wakes and the cycle starts again.

It's terrible for Hiroto and Aiko, this she absently catalogues through the haze of pain and grief: Aiko's eyes are shadowed and worn and Hiroto has new crevices inked into his skin. She sees them better now, as time passes, but she can no longer bring herself to care now that she knows the cause of her blindness. Her new body's parents hover around her all the time now like anxious birds to a threatened nest, their haggard appearances and tired eyes dominating much of what she sees.

They are desperate and they grow more so as time crawls on. They try everything, they rock her and sing to her and murmur softly in rhythmic Japanese. But none of it works, of course it doesn't, it doesn't solve the problem that she's _dead_ and this isn't her body, but a part of her distantly appreciates their efforts. They try feeding her more but _no_ , no way is she breastfeeding and Aiko grows visibly distressed when she refuses. Instead she is brought before a parade of new faces, old and young. She thinks that these must be Hiroto and Aiko's support network, friends, family and doctors, but none of them can stop her cries.

The strange thing under her skin writhes and snaps with the force of her pain. Crashing and pulling through her body like rapids in a ravine; when the other people touch her, she feels them trying to touch the energy with a thrum of their own, trying to calm it gently before being forced out when it bites back angrily at them.

There are scores of people that try and help, that mutter around her in frantic Japanese, she understands none of what they're saying, but at least she's manages to pick out her new name: Moriko, Senju Moriko.

There is something about the name that rings alarm bells, but she is too steeped in her own mourning to pay it much thought, in her head she's still Josephine, still hasn't accepted her new life. She knows it will come though, even the deepest grief makes way for acceptance eventually, humans are nothing if not adaptable and it is inevitable that she will adapt. But for now she can't accept it, for now she clings on almost violently to the person she was before and the people she knew, grabs on rabidly to the pain and the loss because it's all she has left of the life she once lived.

She screams and she cries and she wails her grief out to the uncaring god that did this to her, to the silent universe that doesn't even have a consciousness to _care_. She grieves and she mourns and she pleads and she begs and the people around her grow ever more frantic at her unceasing cries. But right now, she cannot bring herself to care.

And so time passes.

~~*8*~~

It turns out it's not time and the natural grieving process that stops her from crying.

It's something darker.

Her body must be several months old now, per her rudimentary awareness of time, but it's hard to tell between the blackouts and her crying. Hiroto and Aiko certainly _look_ like they've been through months of stress and sleepless nights, but she's hesitant to use that as a measure of time.

By now she has almost full control over her body and has even managed to become strong enough to move her head, her eyesight is much clearer and her skin doesn't feel as hypersensitive and tender. But still it doesn't make the situation any more bearable, if anything it makes it worse; there's a difference between intellectually knowing she now has a baby's body and actually _feeling_ it grow and change, all it does is continually remind her of her new reality.

But all of that is irrelevant compared to _that_.

It happens at night. Months have passed since her revelation and the air feels cold and wet against her young skin. It's the kind of chilled damp that occurs in the fading warmth of autumn, hesitantly cool as winter draws closer. The air in the house smells of fragrant incense mixed in with something undeniably woodsy and the lights are dim, flickering flames.

Aiko is holding her in the candlelight, rocking her softly and humming a sweet lullaby to her as she cries, it's rather soothing actually, and if this were any other situation than what it is she would have been lulled to sleep. But unfortunately she's still a reincarnated dead person so she continues to cry her grief into the night.

Hiroto stands by the window on the other side of the room, his tired face thrown into relief by the twinkling lights outside and he runs a hand through his messy dark hair as he sighs with exhaustion. He's just about in her view as she stares with teary eyes over Aiko's shoulder, and she's struck for the umpteenth time by how tall he is. He turns his head over towards Aiko and looks at them both with such love and worry that she immediately feels incredibly guilty and ashamed of her presence in their lives.

" _Kanojo ni nani ga machigatte iru to omoimasu ka?"_ he says to Aiko, his voice strained and eyes dark.

Aiko turns around to face him, removing him from her view, " _Shiranai, watashitachiha subete o tameshite nani mo hatarakanakatta. Ishade sura shiranai,"_ she sighs turning her head in toward her neck so she breathes in the scent of her fragrant hair.

Hiroto echoes Aiko's exhausted sigh with one of his own and turns back to face the window as she continues to cry in the background. She curses herself internally for being such an awful person, for stealing this kind couple's child and ruining their lives. But the wound inside her is so _raw_ still, so aching and sore that she can't help the tears and screams that stream from her.

Suddenly a weight fills the air and Aiko and Hiroto freeze.

" _Hiroto, Sorehanandesuka?"_ Aiko murmurs, her voice noticeably tightening as she feels the woman's arms tense around her.

Hiroto jerks back around to stare out the window with sharp eyes as Aiko clutches her infant body to her chest, slender fingers digging into her tiny back when:

 _BOOM!_

A sonic explosion that she can only compare to films of atomic bombs going off rips through the air and sends her infant ears ringing. A few seconds later a shockwave of pressure tears through the open window and through the room, blowing Hiroto and Aiko's hair back and causing the woman to clutch her fiercer to her body as she braces herself again the force.

And then, a roar.

Its's loud and terrible and sends tangible vibrations through the air. There is anger in it, wild, furious anger that she can almost taste on her tongue as the sound of it shatters her ears. Fear skitters down her spine as it echoes all around them and a tiny part of her brain dormant since the days when humans were little more than upright apes kicks into gear. She feels hunted, she feels like _prey._ Her tiny body freezes like it's been caught in a headlight and her crying abruptly stops as terror consumes her mind. She can't think on her grief now; her brain is focused on more important matters: the instinctual urge to _getawaygetawayrunrunRUN!_ and the irrational desire to curl herself up as small as she can so whatever the thing out there is, it can't find her.

But that's impossible as the strange pressure in the air suddenly increases tenfold and the atmosphere is flooded with a strange energy.

The energy hovers in the room with the three of them like a toxic cloud, biting and burning her skin like acid. The thrumming thing under her skin reacts immediately to the foreign force as it tries to burrow its way into her veins like a poison, snapping back frantically as it tries to flush the chemical heat from her living flesh. It rages an internal battle across the fields of her lungs, heart and liver but the energy is too strong, too _Other,_ too _much_ and it begins to eat away at her from the inside.

There's a malice to it, the pressure and the energy; a cruelty and malevolence that surpass anything she thought possible, a great black rage that spits acid and corrodes all it touches. The sensation of it surrounds her, makes her feel helpless and petrified, makes her want to run, to hide, to curl up and disappear. But she can't do anything because her limbs are too weak and she's too young and the force of the pressure feels like it's crushing her very _soul._

Aiko runs over to the window, and if she could move against the sheer animal terror, she'd scream at her to _get away_ because there's a _monster_ out there that wants to _kill them_.

Hiroto has frozen to the spot, she can see him out of the corner of her eyes as he stands rigid and locked in position. Aiko stops in front of the window too and her body abruptly stiffens and involuntary tremors start to rock her form as she clutches her tiny body so tightly it's almost painful. _"Kami-sama,"_ she breathes, her voice small and terrified.

" _Kyuubi,"_ Hiroto replies with stricken awe.

Wait

 _WHAT!?_

 _Kyuubi!?_ As in _Naruto_ the anime Kyuubi, as in the great chakra monster that attacked Naruto's home village the night of his birth and was sealed inside him Kyuubi!? She doesn't know any Japanese but she knows what that means and no, _no_ , she refuses to deal with that too, along with everything else. She refuses to believe she's been reborn into a fictional universe, refuses to believe that the monster outside that is steadily crushing and burning the life out of her is some made-up fox monster.

 _(But what else could it be? The only real monsters are people and people don't roar with the force of a dozen explosions)_

She is jolted from her thoughts as another roar rockets through the air, this one just as cruel and wrathful as the first and it jolts Hiroto into action. He turns swiftly away from the window and grabs Aiko's arm and the woman is unresisting and terrified as Hiroto drags her through the house and swiftly down the stairs.

" _Nani shiyou ka? Doko ni iku no?"_ Aiko cries, her voice tremulous with fear as Hiroto drags her out of the house, she can feel the woman's terror in the racing pulse next to her ear and the desperate clasp of her hands around her back.

Hiroto voice is quiet against the hundreds of horrified screams that cut through the air around her. _"Yama no naka no hinansho wa, anzendearu_."

Aiko stops suddenly in the middle of the street, the panicked crowds streaming all around her like a swarm as her stiff arms clutch even tighter, _"Anzen? Kore wa tan'naru shinryakude wa arimasen, Hiroto!"_ she calls back, something in her voice edging on hysteria as she trembles against the weight in the air.

Hiroto stops and turns back to gather the two them into his arms, " _Watashi wa shitte iruga, watashi wa shinjinakereba naranai,"_ her murmurs into the top of Aiko's head, _"Watashi wa kore ga owaride wa nai to shinjinakereba naranai."_

" _Kowaidesu,"_ Aiko whispers into Hiroto's chest.

" _Watashi_ _modesu,"_ he replies, kissing her head softly, " _shikashi, wareware wa idō shinakereba naranai."_

And with that they're off, Hiroto drags Aiko through the screaming, terrified crowds, cutting through groups of people frozen in terror as the terrible weight and rage in the air robs them of coherent thought.

She can feel that horrible energy stronger out here on the streets, the hideous, bubbling burn of it crawling further through her body and suffocating her with every breath. She can't move, she can't cry, she can barely breathe from the furious force that presses her on all sides. She can _feel_ just how much whatever the roaring monster is wants to kill her: wants to split her delicate flesh with its claws and scorch her from the inside out. She is overwhelmed with the images that flood through her mind of her new, fragile body crushed by a massive paw, or devoured by giant slavering jaws and _she doesn't want to die!_

It's that one revelation that races through her head as her new parents run, shouted from every part of her brain in a screeching cacophony of survival instinct. It blocks out thoughts of the impossibility of giant monsters and unreality of a thousand voices screaming _Kyuubi!_ as they flee. She doesn't want to die here; she doesn't want this confusing new life in this body-that-isn't-hers to end before it's really begun. She's died once already, lost everything already before, and there's no guarantee that she'll get a third chance if she falls again; she doesn't want to die a helpless baby, buried under rubble or strangled by terror.

The night around them is rife with the yells of fleeing people and the sudden crashes of destroyed buildings as they shatter. She can just about see over Aiko's shoulder as she runs, just make out the whites of the eyes of the people that cry out in fear around her. In the background, furious growls and snarls louder than a jet engine burst through the air as the heavy pounding of Aiko's runs jolts through her body.

If this were any other time, she would be almost fascinated by the world around her, she has no recollection of leaving Hiroto and Aiko's house. But now the night around her is one messy blur of darkened colours and distant fires as her new parents run towards whatever destination they have in mind.

In the distance, she hears a shuddering boom and the crushing pressure hovering in the air and the killing intent that shrouds it grows worse.

It _hurts_.

She feels like she's dying; the air scalds her little lungs and shrieks of the people running ring in her ears. She sees the accident, what little she remembers of it, again and again in her head and the hazy crash of solid metal mixed in with visions of being crushed and burning.

Hiroto and Aiko navigate the streets with a single-minded dogged purpose, dodging people and buildings as they swerve around corners heading what feels like deeper into the town. She peers over Aiko's shoulder in morbid, terrified awe at the chaos in the streets and through her blurred eyes sees people scramble in blind fear over each other like rabid animals to get away. The crowd behaves almost as a beast in itself and people are consumed by the rising tide of bodies and their forms chewed and spat out.

But then, through a split in the buildings, she sees _it_.

 _Oh my God._

Her vision isn't perfect so she can't see it in its entirety, but there, towering above the buildings is a _monster._

Its body is a mass of orange that thrashes both solid and indistinct, the colour of hellfire and poison, as it glows with an unholy light. Behind it, nine swirling tails writhe like furious serpents in the night, smacking down buildings and wiping away entire districts with a single swipe. Its eyes are giant and bloodshot and gleam with such wrath, such _rage_ that it would take her breath if she had any. There's a sense of age about it, a sense of ancient inhuman fury that reminds her of tales about the monsters of classical myth, godlike and eternal. She can feel its anger, can feel its bloodlust deep in her bones. Its huge and hideous, monstrous and terrible and as unavoidable as a natural disaster.

High above the town, sparks and explosions light up next to its skin like tiny fireflies next to a mountain, the efforts of people trying to fight back the creature. All they do though is make the thing more angry as it roars and swats a tail through another district, killing dozens.

 _Kyuubi_ , she thinks with terrified incredulity as she looks up at the orange tower of rage and her mind just blanks out at the sight of it. Seeing is believing as they say, and seeing the monster makes a believer out of her.

It truly is horrific. Seeing the thing on tele or in a manga just doesn't compare to the real thing, cannot come close to the true terror that looms and snarls over the shadowed roofs of coloured buildings. It's a pillar of hate and malice, a gargantuan monolith of sinister burning energy that leaks and spills for miles in every direction. Looking at it she can understand why the villagers treated Naruto like they did all those years, they had seen _this_ , seen the destruction and felt the hate _._

The fox fills the air with a poison that clogs and smothers, it blankets the area in such unbearable pressure and heat that people drop dead from pure dread and terror. It coils its energy ( _chakra_ ) through the bodies of its victims and eats them from the inside.

The sight of it and knowledge of its existence in her strange new life is more terrifying than its presence because and _oh God,_ she's been reborn into an _anime!_ The pieces slot together in her horrified brain: the Kyuubi, the name Senju, the strange symbol in all rooms in the house, the casual use of words like _shinobi_ and _Hokage-sama_ from Hiroto and Aiko (something that she's been forcefully ignoring until now). _It all makes sense_.

A wild, crazy hysteria begins to build within her, a horrified, giddy, roundabout of emotion that becomes a swarm of insects in her veins. She almost feels like laughing, mad hysterical laughter at the insanity of all this. Not only has she been reborn with all her memories, she's been reborn into a _fictional universe,_ where _none of this is real_.

There are a thousand million existential questions that come along with that realisation, each more absurd and disturbing than the last: if she's here, does that mean this world is real? Are all worlds in fiction real? Are authors and artists looking through divides in reality to other worlds in their work? Otherwise, is this place not real? Is _she_ not real now? Was she ever real to begin with? Is her world real? What even defines realness?

The whole thing makes her brain hurt and it feels like fifty hyperactive children are banging on the walls of her mind, clamouring for attention.

But another thought hits, if she's in another world now, not only has she lost her friends, family and life, she's lost _the whole world_. There is absolutely no chance of seeing anything familiar ever again. Her family doesn't even exist here, will never exist here. She can never tell them, even secretly, that she's okay (which she knows in some distant part of her mind she's been hoping for the opportunity to do).

She feels manic laughter/tears build inside her as she tries fit this new information into her world view. But this is hardly the time for an existential crisis, the Kyuubi still roars in the background, choking what she now realises is Konoha(!) in its hate.

It's all rather ironic really. Hadn't this been everything she'd wanted when she was young? To live in one of the worlds she'd read about, a world of far more adventure and excitement than her own. Hadn't this been everything she'd ever dreamed of? If there is a god out there, it must be a cruel one, playing elaborate games with her sanity and giving her what she'd thought she wanted but never really did.

She takes it back, looking up at the Kyuubi, that enormous monster of fury and power, she takes all of it back: every idle daydream of living a story, every passing whimsy of being part of some great adventure, she takes it all back. She wants none of this, doesn't want to live in a world of huge, smothering chakra monsters and child soldiers, of government sanctioned mass-murder and men who can crush mountains by themselves.

She doesn't remember everything of this world and its story in total clarity -it has been several years since the series finished and she'd stopped watching- but from what she does remember, this world is a dangerous one. Its war ravaged and will be again in her new lifetime. The village, which has become _her_ village will be destroyed multiple times, invaded and torn to the ground; people will die, monsters will rise and she will _live through it all_.

She feels out of control and helpless, with the Kyuubi's corrosive chakra poisoning the air around her and her weak body useless against the force. She feels more afraid than she ever has before, terrified not just of the monster that burns for her death, but of the future too. The invasions, the war, so many different ways to die and she is _terrified_ of dying again.

She knows there is only one way to survive the coming catastrophes, one way in which she has any real chance of staying alive.

She must become a shinobi.

It seems somewhat counterintuitive at first, ninja in this world stand on the front lines and face death every day after all. But to become a civilian means to remain helpless, to remain unable to move and defend herself. It means a continuation of the same utter powerlessness and vulnerability she feels now, trapped as an adult mind in an infant's body, forced to watch the world around her in short bursts while strangers manipulate her body like a puppet.

She looks at the Kyuubi from her weak, defenceless body with useless, feeble eyes and _refuses_ to be so helpless again.

But to become a shinobi means taking a step forward, making a giant adjustment in the way she thinks and leaving the past behind. To become a shinobi means being willing to devote herself in every way to this village, this _fictional_ village. To be willing to give her life for this place and the people in it.

But parts of her brain still scream that this place _isn't real._

How can she give her life for a place that should only exist in the pages of a book or on a TV screen? How can she protect and fight people who should be nothing more than _characters?_ How can she face them and the village every day without seeing the secrets that both hide, without seeing the past and the future weaving around them in disjointed, half-forgotten moments? Without revealing more than she should?

 _(Without shrinking away in revulsion at the darkest and most terrible parts of this world, parts she knows are there, parts that reach out with poisoned talons and bloodstained jaws.)_

She thinks of Doctor Who and fixed points and timelines and wonders just how she can exist here at all, if her very presence is jeopardising the fabric of this reality.

(There is a part of her though, buried beneath the fear that _revels_ in this, in this world and the idea of being part of it. A childish, selfish part that sees this new world as the excitement that most can only ever dream of. But that part is small and quiet, buried beneath layers of heavy grief and primal terror.)

If she is to remain sane she must put the question of realness behind her. She must stop thinking of this world as fictional, of these people's lives as nothing more than parts of a story; lest she spend the rest of her days detached and cold, never truly seeing the consequences of her actions as _real_.

And that way leads madness. That way leads psychopathy and emptiness and everything she doesn't want to be. That way ends with playing god and twisting the strings of fate around her uncaring fingers and watching them _dance_.

So she must take this world as real, each and every rock and tree: every life, every event, every sunrise.

And wow, isn't that crazy?

She balks somewhat at the realities of becoming a ninja here though, of dedicating her all to that life. To be a ninja is to be a killer: is to be a thief, a seducer, an assassin. To be a ninja in this world means to submitting to a corrupt government and following orders no question. It means to killing and stealing and spying and seducing and it goes again every moral, every lesson she's ever learned.

And she doesn't know if her conscience can deal with that, doesn't know if she can take the pressures that come with ninja life.

 _(But she feels the Kyuubi all around her and it threads fire through her flesh and crushes her limbs and she never wants to feel so powerless again.)_

And isn't that just _horrifying_ , that to increase her own chances in life, she must learn to kill.

But she must survive.

She feels weak and cold at the thought of dying again, dying so young and wasting her chances. She is a selfish creature and doesn't want to become nothing.

 _(She doesn't want to feel so helpless and vulnerable again, stripped bare and feeble in front of the Kyuubi.)_

She makes a promise to herself, she will become the Best Damn Ninja Ever. It will be dangerous, yes, but the more powerful she is, the more likely it is that she'll be able to survive the future coming for her, that she'll be able to take down the demons of this world and stretch her life line to its very limit.

She will immerse herself in this world, take every bit of knowledge it offers and run with it, she's always been good at absorbing information and she'll need every advantage she can get. She must _belong_ in this world, stop seeing herself as an imposter or a fake. She must become Senju Moriko and all that it entails. A part of this reality, a citizen of this world.

She is reluctant; hesitant and scared to let go of Josephine Baker and the person she was for twenty-five years. But she _has_ to, has to live and keep going with some sort of sanity intact.

So in that moment she looks up at the Kyuubi, the fox that inspires so much fear as it rains terror down upon Konoha, and puts Josephine Baker aside. She becomes Senju Moriko and takes her life and her name. If there was another Senju Moriko in the manga, it doesn't matter because _she_ is Moriko now and this world is _real_. There are no other options and there can be no destined path, not for this world and not for her.

She adapts because it is necessary, changes because she must, but vows, in heart and soul (the soul that will always be the girl who was Josephine) to never forget where she came from.

Blessedly, this is when her brain blacks out.


	3. Chapter 3

**Of the Forest**

Chapter 3

A/N: Thank you to anyone who read, and special thanks to the people who favourited/followed, much love to you, you wondrous paragons of society:) It makes me happy inside to think that people find even a little joy in my work:) Also shout out to the reviewers who took the time to comment, you lot make my day whether it's criticisms or praise, it's just lovely to know your opinions. As for this chapter it's mainly just the growing up process, which I want to get through quickly to get on with the actual story, sorry if anything feels rushed, I tried to make it interesting but it's hard when you're very limited with what a character can do, hope you like it anyway. As always I check my own work, mistakes are kinda inevitable and I apologise.

 **Disclaimer: Obligatory 'I don't own'**

* * *

Everything changes after the Kyuubi attack.

Moriko (because she _is_ Moriko now) feels it in the air around her, a heavy tension that clings to her skin like vapour before a storm and hovers like an assassin's knife. It must be strong if she, with her baby senses and shortened infant attention span can sense it, and she both wonders and already knows what this means for the village.

 _(A dead Hokage with no corpse, a blond baby with that will shoulder a village's hate and compound littered with dead, eyeless bodies like bloody porcelain dolls)_

But she cannot focus on that, these things are beyond her control and her goal is to survive, not to change fate. She cannot let herself become weighted down her foreknowledge, she can't let herself worry over everything she cannot change, she'll go mad.

She wakes after the attack to an unfamiliar face hovering above her hazy eyes and almost wants to burst into tears at the strange features. It's an infantile reaction, one born from the ingrained reflexes of this body and she _hates_ it. It reminds her too much of her now apparent weakness and she wants to bury the urge deep down wrest this new body into submission.

Crying is helplessness, crying is tears on her face because she can't handle her emotions or control her body and she _will not_ cry over a stranger's face.

But it's unnerving to say the least. Most of the people she's seen up until now have resembled Hiroto _(Papa)_ and Aiko _(Mama)_ in some way: the curve of their faces, the slant of their eyes, and she knows that they are meant to be her new family. An exotic collection of fuzzy faces seen through tearstained eyes that she _thinks_ she could just about identify. But this face is different, half covered in pale blue gauze; all she can see is the strange sunset-orange of unfamiliar irises and tightened seaweed brows.

Moriko feels the ground beneath her, rough gravel digging into her tender skin through a fluffy yellow blanket that she remembers being in her cot. Her skin feels bare in the chilled air and all around her the world is a gloomy shadow with flickering orbs of hazy light dotted unevenly at the edge of her vision. The noise around her echoes, as if underground or in a cave and an anxious panic thrums through the air like a heartbeat.

She thinks they might be in a shelter and is unprepared for the blinding wave of relief that crashes over her then because _oh thank God._ She silently thanks every deity she's ever heard of that they made it and prays to all of them that she'll never have to repeat that Kyuubi had been the most terrifying thing she's ever experienced and she knows that she'd do anything to never have to look at that _thing_ again.

Moriko now thinks she understands humanity's enduring fascination with inhuman monsters: Godzilla, Predator, Alien. There is something so inherently terrifying about looking up at a creature so unlike yourself and feeling so small and so tiny in the face of this alien thing that wants to kill you. It's paralyzing.

The fox had made Moriko's blood freeze in her veins and drain from her skin, its killer intent had shrouded her senses and made her want to die just to escape the crushing terror. No wonder the villagers had hated Naruto for years; she wonders just how many had died tonight where they stood, how many people's hearts had given out in the face of such overwhelming fear and how many had stood unable to move as a massive tail flattened their frozen forms.

But Moriko is safe now, she and her new family have made it to shelter and her whole body relaxes as the remnants of adrenaline leave her heart.

The stranger above her is something new though and she wonders why she is lying on the ground rather than in one of her parent's arms; is even more confused as to why she has been stripped of the almost irritatingly cute pyjamas that Aiko- _Mama_ had dressed her in earlier.

The stranger leans forward then and hovers large hands over her small chest, fingers coated in a luminescent viridian that she can feel shifting in supersonic waves next to her skin. An odd itchy sensation sprouts in her stomach, something like nervousness mixed with the beginnings of a cramp and the stranger's frown grows harsher. The slashes of dark green on his (she assumes it's a him based on the size and shape of his hands, but she could be wrong) forehead straining as the lines on his face deepen and he stares down at her body with a determined concentration that puzzles her.

He places his glowing hands on her chest and suddenly something _burns_.

Moriko cannot hold back the scream that bursts from her this time, a high pitched childish shriek of pain that bounces around her. At the edge of her awareness, she hears the familiar cadence of Aik- no, _Mama_ and _Papa's_ voices as they flutter around her in distress and feels Mama'ssoft hands stroke trembling fingers through the fluffy down on her new head.

She figures out then that the man must be a medic, the feeling of intruding energy slipping like thin string under her veins is a familiar sensation now. The other doctors she'd seen during the throes of her grief had all done something similar, but none had hurt, had scrapped the insides of her nerves quite like this.

She is absently able to appreciate the fact that she now knows that the foreign energy is iryō jutsu, something that had always particularly fascinated her watching the show. Moriko had always been intrigued as to how something as intangible and strange as chakra had been able to directly affect the body in the way it seemed to in the hands of Sakura or Tsunade. It had never really been explained in either the anime or the manga and that had frustrated her a great deal. The part of her that isn't still reeling over the latest revelation to disrupt her worldview delights in the idea that now she'll be able to find out.

But the pain racing through her bones and the steadily building agony beneath her skin distracts her from this line of thought and she tosses her weak, heavy head to the side wildly in an attempt to get away from the bubbling hurt. Mama's hand clenches involuntarily in her thin hair as the trembling in her fingers increases and she feels Papa reach down to wrap one of his large, rough hands around one of her tiny ones in a tight-soft grip that belays his panic. She feels inexplicably comforted that they are here with her through the pain, the love in their eyes lights up in her memory and she wants to curl her small body into their warmth and escape this night and the blistering pain now circulating in her skin.

She doesn't know what this medic is doing but she wants him to _stop_. Before, her chakra (wow, she has chakra now! _How cool is that?_ ) had lashed out at the other doctors with sharps burst of crackling energy, but something about this time makes her feel as though the medic is emptying a vat of acid though her veins.

Her bones feel like they're bursting now, something corrosive and sharp making them swell and crack and her muscles are melting beneath her skin. Her own childish screams echo around her and in a last-ditch attempt to escape the pain, she throws her mind backwards.

Moriko turns her awareness inward, chasing the pain down through her cells in a spiral of flashing colours and ringing cries. She hadn't been able to do this in her old body -her original one- hadn't had the same awareness of her being that she does now. It's an odd thing, troubling in the same way that everything is now, but not unwelcome. It had been a reprieve during the black months of her grief, focusing her mind inward, away from the disturbing, terrifying reality around her and just drifting.

She supposes that this new ability is the product of the chakra that runs through every cell of this strange new body and the odd dysphoria that still shudders at the corners of her mind. Moriko still doesn't feel _right_ in this body, even after months of occupying it and her new resolution to leave her past behind and _belong_ , still doesn't feel comfortable in her form.

It had begun after realising that she'd died and been reborn, the sense that this wasn't her and _couldn't_ be. Self-denial and shivering unease underneath the roaring tide of grief that made her both hyperaware of every movement and touch and strangely separated from them. And from it, she could feel every part of her new body: from her fingers and toes, to the racing beat of her young heart and the breath mixing in her lungs.

Moriko follows the sensation of pain down through her body -escaping and searching- and into the shimmering latticework of what is now clearly chakra. She hadn't known what is was before, hadn't really had the presence of mind to care, and now it glows and shimmers a colourless colour in her mind's eye: looping vibrant streams of power and tepid maelstroms of what she thinks are chakra gates.

She finds something then, something she's never seen before, in the ethereal junction where the foreign shining leaf of the medic's chakra meets the turbulent blue of her own.

In amongst the seemingly harmonious dance of her infant chakra and his refined points is a sour, bubbling orange that permeates the undulating blue of her and the attacks the steady green of him. Every time the medic's chakra goes to touch the orange stuff it's like caesium being dropped into water, violent explosions of corrosive acid bursting into her pathways and burning up in her mind. The medic struggles valiantly against the shockwaves of it, but it is clear to her inner sight that on his own, he just isn't strong enough.

Moriko knows, intrinsically, that the poisonous orange is the Kyuubi's toxic power, remembers how during the flight from her new home it had sunk vicious claws in to her body and tried to eat her from the inside out. She distantly recalls -now that the pain feels numbed in her own inner awareness- how in the anime it had burned Naruto's skin like fire and made it harder for wounds to heal.

But that was filtered through a jinchūriki and this is the pure stuff, slowly killing her from the inside.

The realisation sends a bolt of pure fear racing through her body, and she can see how the emotion affects her chakra, making it thrash wildly and churn up like storm waters. She cannot die now. Won't let herself. Cannot be killed by the Kyuubi now that she has just accepted this new life as hers. Moriko wills herself forward, against the pain that grows stronger in her mind even as she remains unattached to her physical body in this inner state. It burns around her like a poisonous firestorm, a scorching irregular pulse of devouring flames that clashes with the medic and her and sends skittering lightning through her bones.

She _forces_ her chakra to act, this foreign organ that by all rights shouldn't exist, this pure energetic version of her recycled soul that ebbs and flows through the body that is/isn't hers. Strains her mind in a way that is instinctual and incredibly weird and exerts effort to complete what should be an impossible task.

Moriko stretches her mental fingers out and digs them like _claws_ into the Kyuubi's chakra and watches her chakra do the same. The rivers of energy perk up and rise, sweeping high and fast like tsunami rapids through every strange channel in her body and she _pushes_ them with intangible mental hands.

It's a strange sensation, akin to touching liquid mercury, like flexing muscles she didn't know she had. It's hard at first, forcing the lazy rivers of her chakra to move, but it gets easier until the power is circulating through her body in flooding streams. It attacks the Kyuubi's chakra, works in tandem with medic's as it actively flushes that toxic sunburn from her cells. Unlike the medic's chakra, there is something in hers that nullifies the poison when it forcefully pushes against it, something that seems to counteract the burn, she wonders on it but all her mental power is currently strained on forcing her chakra to move. Moriko gets the feeling that chakra so young shouldn't be manipulated like this, that a true baby's mind wouldn't be able to take the stress that is building behind her eyes.

But her will to survive is stronger than her new body and her chakra is part spiritual, part _mind_ and it forces the physical to act.

She senses the medic's surprise in his chakra as it is swept up in the whirlpool of hers. The bright green stutters and jolts and she gets the oddest sensation of subconscious questioning and confusion from it. Moriko pays it no attention though, forcing her chakra to wrap around the medic's and direct it to where he needs to go. He catches on quickly and they work together: her forcefully flushing the Kyuubi's chakra out and neutralising it and him following on behind to fix the damage.

She feels the echo of pain begin to lessen around her as they progress, falling to a quiet sputtering hum in the background rather than the shredding wail it was. She doesn't know how long passes in her strange inner world, it could be anything from a minute to a year, but the medic's steady chakra stays twisted in hers until the Kyuubi is driven from her veins.

She opens her eyes again then and stares into the persimmon of the medic's. His eyes are wide and sharp and there is something like awe and a little more like terror in them as he looks down at her. Moriko stares back up at him and feels a frisson of fear and foreboding trickle like ice down her spine. It occurs to her then just how odd what she just did with her chakra must be, how such active control might be perceived in a child only a few months' old.

Her mind twists and curls in on itself then and she feels her tiny limbs tense as she pulls them into herself in a primitive defence. She thinks of Danzō and Orochimaru, of what happens to children who are just slightly different in this village, of Itachi who became/becomes a kinslayer and Kakashi who was/is so broken despite (because of) his genius.

That is the _last thing_ she wants. To be taken and twisted and fractured to fit some sort of genius mould. To have her identity wiped and her odd adult mind exploited by those with no morals, to be forced to face impossible decisions like those of Itachi or slavery like the children of Root.

Moriko hopes then, beyond anything else, that the medic doesn't see what she does in her eyes: the strange awareness and alien intelligence that shouldn't be present in an infant's gaze. She looks up at him and hopes the fear doesn't show.

But then something shifts in his eyes, taking the edge from the startled terror until it fades into something a little more calculating. His eyes narrow into thin slits as he considers her with a wary gaze. They lock eyes for a silent forever before he shakes his head it what appears to be derision and moves away.

She has the strangest sensation of having dodged a bullet.

Moriko vaguely hears him say something to her parents and her mama lets out a strangled sob before she suddenly feels herself be lifted into her arms and crushed to her chest, her head pressed into her new mother's neck as the woman buries her face in her sparse hair. She can feel her mama's body shake like a leaf in the wind and the warm splatters of her tears fall as raindrops on to her head; she is sobbing: quiet tears of exhausting relief as she layers soft kisses over Moriko's crown.

Her papa moves to stand with them, the muted rustle of his clothes the only warning she gets before he pulls them both to his body and holds them tight.

She is enveloped by them both, her new parents, the man and woman who made the body that is now hers, and without the confusion of the beginning and the mourning of the last few months she allows herself to really _feel_ the love they have for her. With her fledgling acceptance of this new life in the forefront of her mind she lets that love be for _her_ , Josephine Moriko Baker Senju, the adult-child from this/another world, lets the love that her new body automatically feels for the arms around her unfurl like a shy flower in her soul.

Moriko basks in their warmth, in the heartbeat under her body and the gentle thrumming chakra in her parent's forms. She lets their large bodies comfort her after the night she's had and allows the soft symphony of their breathing to calm her turbulent mind.

She sets aside the burning questions and black eclipse of terror that stab at her brain for another day and lets herself enjoy being alive.

~~*8*~~

They return to the house after that night.

Papa is absent a lot now, his presence has become fleeting where it once was a steady constant and on his face, spidery lines of stress have begun to creep between his eyes. When he comes home now his strong arms cradle her almost desperately and his eyes flash with a sort of contained fear and a confusing amount of gratitude. She doesn't know quite what to make of this, the way his chakra runs up against her it's like he's forever checking that she's still alive, but she muses that it must be a reaction to all of them almost dying during the attack.

Happily, Mama is still around though, her soft brown hair and dainty orchid scent are always reassuringly present, and the way she cuddles her weak body makes Moriko melt like toffee in her arms. But her mother, too, holds her like she thinks she's going to vanish at any moment, like her entire body is made of spun glass; the woman is almost compulsively touching her now, and her eyes never truly stray from her form. There is a barely contained worry in both her parents, one she can't fully explain.

Moriko can't complain about all the extra attention though, there is something incredibly comforting about being cared for so completely and it opens her heart more and more to her to these strangers who are now her parents, quietly reassuring her that they will love her no matter who she is.

The patterns of life are different now, especially for her, and the aura saturating the air is strung taut and thick with anticipation. The village was half destroyed in the attack, and its young, promising Hokage lies dead in the stomach of a death god. The village must have lost a good portion of its stand-by forces that night and she wonders just how close they are to war. She knows it won't happen, but she has to wonder just how far she can trust her memory of the anime when this is a real world not a story.

She tries to work out if her new parents are ninja. Hiroto certainly could be, his hands are rough and calloused and covered in a patchwork of thin, ropey scars. But he doesn't wear a hitate, not one that she can see anyway and his gait is too relaxed and loping, so she tentatively decides that he isn't.

Aiko on the other hand, is _definitely_ not. She's too sweet, too gentle; her hands are dainty and thin with small elegant bones like a noblewoman's -like hers were in her last life. Her new mama moves like a dancer, precise steps and an awareness of her body, but not like a trained killer, there is no lethality there, no innate predation; she has the quiet confidence of someone important but not the ever-so-slightly chilling presence of a killer.

This…confuses Moriko. As far as she's aware the Senju are a ninja clan, fielding legends like the Shodaime, the Nidaime and the Godaime, not a civilian one: but here are her parents, looking more and more civilian by the day. And as strange as that is, all it does is beg the question of how the Senju are still around anyway. The anime and manga weren't really clear on what happened to the clan, but they weren't really present in it either, hardly mentioned despite being the founders along with the Uchiha. She had just assumed that they'd all died out.

But the parade of faces that still flit across her vision beg to differ. All of them are her family, all of them Senjus; they all share a certain resemblance in their looks and manner and the chakra that sings underneath them all when they hold her shimmers with a shared radiance. It still comes as a surprise that chakra is even a _thing_. Despite have seen and constantly feeling her own, (which is stranger than she can possibly say) feeling the muted hum of power beneath another's skin still astounds her with the sheer impossibility of it and Moriko finds herself hyperaware of the shining vitality running through her cells.

It's a curious sensation having it there, it's like a distilled version of herself that runs plasma through her body: not quite liquid, not quite gas, but still somehow _there_. Moriko feels it constantly, like a second shimmering skin, but annoyingly enough, no matter how hard she tries she just can't get it to follow her commands the way she did after the Kyuubi attack. It acts sluggish now: unreliable and stodgy, trying to grab it feels like trying to grab a river, and when she tries to direct the flow, suddenly it's as unmovable as a mountain.

She tries though, almost constantly. If she wants to become a ninja -a strong ninja- if she wants to _survive_ , control of her chakra is key. She suddenly has so much more respect for Sakura and her innately superior chakra control, trying to wrangle her chakra is like trying to wrangle a cat: it just does what it wants regardless.

But she can't give up, she has a purpose now, a goal, and the terrifying reality of this new world lurks like the night at the edge of her conscious.

She no longer cries constantly -something she can tell her parents are beyond thankful for- and forces the grief and the near constant fear right to the back of her mind to avoid going utterly insane. She needs grow up fast, she has to be ready when everything in this world kicks off, she must be able to defend herself, to put up a fight when the monsters come; she can't do that if she's a quivering mess of nerves and sorrow, breaking at the slightest touch.

She knows roughly where she is in the timeline, but that does nothing to assuage her fear, the finer points of this world's story have faded over the years as she grew up and moved on. But Moriko knows Orochimaru will attack, that Pein will destroy her new home and that a war to threaten the fate of every living thing looms on the horizon and she **must** be prepared.

Unfortunately though, babies grow frustratingly slowly.

Moriko despairs over her _still_ crappy eyesight and her body's weak, tiny limbs. It feels like she makes _no_ progress in getting stronger, no matter what she tries (although, truthfully, she may be expecting too much too soon) and she trembles at the thought of the threats in the distance, waiting in the shadows. It angers her and she can't escape the desperate, maddening need to _not_ be helpless, to not be caught off guard and useless when she faces death again. She _really, really_ doesn't want to die and that feeds her crazy fervour to new heights.

Her blackouts begin to lessen as time goes on, the pathways in her brain growing to support her consciousness, and she now manages to cling on to her sense of self most of the time. It's tiring, more so than she might've expected; as much as her brain has grown it still isn't _quite_ able to support complex patterns of thought, and the strain of remaining awaresends throbbing pulses of pain pushing out from behind her skull.

Unfortunately, the downside to being mostly alert now is that she tends to still be herself when her body grows hungry and her bladder and bowels give out. Moriko _hates_ this part of being a baby with a fervent passion, _despises_ that she has to lay in her own faeces and urine until either her mother or father change her nappy. It's disgusting, it's _degrading_ and _my God,_ she's an _adult!_ She shouldn't have to need someone to wipe her arse or clean her poo until she's _at least_ seventy-five and her ungrateful children shove her in a care home.

And don't even get her started on breastfeeding.

Moriko had tried to refuse at first, absolutely adamant that there was _no way on this bloody planet_ that she was sucking on her new mother's boobs. But her little hunger strike had worried her parents so much that they'd brought her to a hospital where a doctor had _tried to shove a tube up her nose_ because apparently, these people had never heard of baby formula. Most of her protests had ended after that.

She understands that it's meant to be an important bonding step for her Aiko, and for her as well she assumes (if she were _actually_ ababy that is) but it doesn't stop her feeling incredibly awkward and like an unrepentant pervert doing it.

But eventually, she grows.

She practises moving all the time now, whether her parents can see her or not. Being the youngest of three in her previous life with no younger cousins means she has no idea what the usual growth rate is for babies so doesn't know if what she's doing is particularly prodigious. Her mama and papa don't _seem_ to think so, but that might be because they're both first time parents and they don't have a frame of reference either. She manages to roll over for the first time maybe a month after the Kyuubi attack and she feels vaguely pathetic about how proud she is when she does it.

But _come on!_ A few months ago she couldn't do anything apart from cry and poo herself, rolling over is _a big deal_.

Moriko feels _slightly_ better about her own pride when she sees how excited Mama gets when she does it the first time in front of her. Her mother is so ecstatic that she lets out a little shriek of joy and gathers her up into her arms to twirl around laughing. It makes her preen shamelessly and she loves how effortlessly happy her mother is at such a relatively small achievement. It makes her feel even better when Mama brings Papa to see it the moment he gets home; she rolls over with great ceremony for him and he beams before layering joyful, proud butterfly kisses all over her body.

She grows to love them, how could she not? They _adore_ her and it's only fair that she begins to in turn. It would take a much more cold-hearted person than she is to remain unmoved in the face of so much unconditional love, so much boundless affection and endless joy at her presence. Moriko unashamedly eats it up, it's just so _nice_ to be the centre of someone's world, she was one of three before and as much as she wouldn't have traded her parents and brothers for anything, she had sometimes felt a little bit like an afterthought.

Hiroto and Aiko though, they pour so much love and care on to her that it glows around her like sunbeams on a midsummers' day. There are kisses and cuddles and snuggles and singing, and though she can't understand, her mama is _always_ talking to her: mindless little conversations in lilting Japanese accompanied by bright smiles and bubbly laughs.

She adores it and it…distracts from the ugly reality waiting for her.

 _(But as much as they care, as much as she cares for them, they are not Karen and William. They are not the man and woman who raised her, who cared for her, who formed her into the person she is; the support when she felt like drowning, the love when the walls were closing in. They are not Mum and Dad,_

 _At least_

 _Not yet.)_

After movement is speech, and that is much, _much_ harder.

Moriko has decided that she _hates_ Japanese. It's got to be the most difficult, frustrating, overly complicated thing she has ever had to learn and she is utterly _pants_ at it. Everything is different in Japanese: word order, vowel sounds, intonation and emphasis and she has absolutely _no idea_ what any of it means. She's never been the best at languages, but she did manage scrape a B in German when she was sixteen and she _can_ order two white coffees in Spanish _(dos café con leche_ ) but Japanese is a whole new problem.

For a start, she has no frame of reference to go on. German sounds enough like angry English that she could usually piece together meanings well enough just by making connections, and the little she does know of the Romance languages comes from how similar to English their shared Latin roots make them.

Japanese is a whole different beast. It evolved separately, thousands of miles away from familiar words and sounds and there is absolutely _nothing_ similar between Japanese and English. Add to the fact that here, in this world, English doesn't even _exist_ so there is no one translating for her makes it _much_ harder.

She can't explain just how frustrating her language problems are, it bubbles up inside her like a little geyser, all the questions she wants to ask and the words she can't say. Moriko babbles at her parents, trying to wrap her clumsy tongue around the unfamiliar syllables and pronounce the words she does know, but annoyingly enough, all she gets are meaningless little bursts of sound that only loosely resemble what she wants. Her vocal cords aren't strong enough and her tongue too young and too _stupidly_ awkward for the verbal gymnastics language requires.

Her mama and papa seem pleased enough though, Moriko can always rely on them to be pleased with everything she does, even if it does hurt her pride somewhat that she's relying on the approval of two people who are happy when she poos herself. Sometimes she can't believe just how low she's sunk.

But eventually the language does come, rudimentary understanding at least. They say that total immersion is the best way to learn a language and with several months of hearing _nothing_ but Japanese, she's had no choice _but_ to pick it up.

Her understanding is strictly limited to the bare basics, tenses are still a mystery and subject pronouns still screw her over but nothing is quite as bad as the fifty different ways of saying the same thing -the way people overanalyse situation, formality and personal relation in Japanese is, quite frankly, ridiculous- but she still manages to get a grip on it to a point (though more out of necessity than anything else).

The speaking still galls her though: in her last life she'd been speaking coherently _long_ before she could walk properly -her mum had liked to use this to point out that she'd always been destined to be a lazy chatterbox- so the fact that she struggles still with talking is a point of personal shame.

But that too comes with time. Moriko will always remember how Aiko had burst into delighted tears when she'd manged to get a recognisable _mama_ past her lips, her silver eyes had grown bright and watery and her beaming smile had glowed like a city at night. Hiroto had given a similar, if somewhat more subdued, reaction when she'd greeted him with _papa_ the next day: a soft, proud smile and a lingering kiss to her brow.

As time passes she grows to love her new mama and papa more and more. Their eager smiling faces and comforting scents are a treasured part of her new life and she wonders how she ever could've thought they'd reject her for any reason. The love her, love _her_ , so much sometimes she can't breathe from the emotion in their eyes, it's humbling and fills her with awe.

And it becomes for them as well as for her that she pushes herself, pushes herself to talk before most babies do, to try and walk when proper infants would still be on crawling. She forces herself to try and control her chakra in those developmental months, which she later learns was pretty much a waste of effort, but the intention was there. She needs to grow strong to protect them as well as herself, she's completely sure that they're civilians by now and she needs them to survive too, they've become a part of her now and she cannot fathom having to lose them as well.

So she's proud to say that by the time her first birthday comes around she has mastered both walking and talking, and that's when things get interesting.


	4. Chapter 4

**Of the Forest**

Chapter 4

A/N: Wow! I never expected so many people to take such an interest in this so quickly and oh my god guys, you make me so happy! It's so nice to see people take an interest in what I write and to leave comments too! Thanks to everyone who reviewed, nice things and criticisms both, I appreciate it all:) I seriously hope I don't go on to disappoint all you wonderful people, be sure to tell me if I do:) Once more I check over my own work so there will be mistakes, apologies in advance and thank you all again!

 **Disclaimer: Naruto is not mine**

* * *

"Moriko! Time to wake up, sleepyhead!" Aiko's voice sings down from somewhere above her head. She opens her eyes groggily to see her mother staring down at her with a smile, her long hair pulled back into a neat bun. _Urgh, morning_ she thinks with grimace, and stretches out her growing limbs, enjoying the pull of muscles beneath skin and the calm thrum of her chakra running over their fibres. She turns her head up to blink at her mama tiredly, her small face scrunching into a disgruntled scowl as she glares balefully at Aiko's contented face.

Moriko doesn't like mornings, never has, never will. Its's a constant that's followed her into her new life and she tries in vain to roll over and go back to sleep.

Irritatingly though, she hears her mama laugh softly under her breath and soon feels soft hands slip under her arms to lift her up. She lets out an involuntary cry of annoyance as she is lifted from the soft, cushiony warmth of her cot and into the morning air. It's noticeably cooler and wraps around her sleep-warmed body in a chill embrace. As she is lifted, her little legs scramble in the air in a futile struggle to go back to bed and she whines petulantly against this grievous assault on her person.

"Mama! _No!_ Sleep!" she babbles as she sleepily fights to return to the cosy blankets. She's not exactly functional when she first wakes up, which is why she doesn't immediately realise that fighting to go back to bed is a wasted effort and she feels somewhat insulted when Aiko just seats her on her hip and chuckles.

"You're such a lazy baby, Moriko," she says, flicking her nose lightly with a grin, "Not sure where you got that from, because it definitely wasn't me." Her mother leans in to nuzzle their noses together in an affectionate Eskimo kiss, "Morning, my little princess," she says with a smile before placing a kiss to her forehead.

Moriko lets the tender warmth of the gesture wash through her body and soothe the cobwebs from her tired mind. She smiles shyly back at her mama, just a slight twitch of her lips and rests her head against the warmth of her shoulder.

She lives for these quiet, affectionate moments; enjoys the soothing peace that radiates in soft ripples from her mama's form. To love and be loved is perhaps the greatest of all gifts and it has been the tireless devotion of her family that has helped her through these last months.

Aiko strokes the fluffy, brown mop on her head gently and wanders over to the window. Moriko raises her head and looks out onto Konoha, glimmering in the morning sun.

The sun is bright this morning and it shines dazzling beams of light down onto the rainbow roofs of the village. After months, most of the damage from the Kyuubi attack has been repaired and the view from the window is a sea of multi-coloured tiles that stretches for miles and merges with the tall trees beyond.

It's beautiful sight, Moriko doesn't think she's ever seen a town more picturesque: her home before had been mostly average red-brick housing in a bland, wet world -only when you left the town for the countryside would you see true beauty. Konoha though, is different. Everywhere is beautiful, even when it rains; the glistening drops cast spectral rainbows in the light and the grey sky only makes the colours more vibrant.

She wants to scoop the sight up and put it in a glass so she can view it forever.

Her home is in the Senju compound, an area loosely separated from the rest of the village by a slightly wider road and an unassuming row of trees. The divide between it and the village though is so minimal that unless you knew where to look, you would never be able to find it.

The compound is at the top of the village, in the shadow of the looming cliff where Hokage's faces are carved and near enough to the Hokage Tower that it's fifteen-minutes away at civilian speed. She supposes it was built with the Shodai in mind, especially considering the compound is on the side of the village closest to his face. The compound is large, but not majorly so -nothing quite like the Uchiha District at least- and mainly acts as just another part of Konoha, with a few shops and cafes and a wide, sprawling garden that must've been the First's work. But deeper in, the compound becomes something out of a fairy story.

Tall trees rise like ancient gods to touch the cerulean sky, their leaves casting soft shadows on the ground below as sharp sunbeams pierce through the gaps in ribbons of diffracted light. The paths are long and winding, but well kept, and wildflowers sprout up in clusters of candy-drops in between the buildings. It's beautiful. Birdsong nearly always echoes in the air and the hum of grasshoppers in the brush sweeps through the grass in a natural symphony.

The houses back there are traditional: squat, wide, two-storey structures built in old Japanese style hidden in amongst the trees. She likes them, they make her think of mystical stories and hidden worlds, they remind her that not all this world is war. They're the oldest buildings in the compound, possibly some of the oldest in the village, and it's there where the clan elders live; far enough away from the bustle of Konoha that they can sit out on their engawa and sip tea, listening to the sounds of nature.

Her house, on the other hand, is near the front of the compound, but slightly elevated so the upstairs windows afford an amazing view of the entire village, shining in the sun. It's an odd sort of building, a mishmash of old and new, but so obviously what she has come to dub 'Senju style' with all the wood, the she has no doubt that it was at least partly built by the First.

She has already come to love the compound, with its leafy cover and quiet serenity; it resonates with age and power in much the same way the oldest woods of her previous world did. She feels almost like she falls into the netherworlds of myth every time her mother takes her down the winding paths and she reaches out the catch the floating sunrays that slip through the trees.

As she's grown older, her mother has begun to take a special delight in showing her around her new home and the village is so much more enchanting when not seen through the veil of grief and fear. The streets are bright and cheerful and burst with life and the markets and shopfronts bustle with busy people as they browse and gossip. The roads are wide and well-trodden, the alleys winding and concealed, and the village's layout is so convoluted that only a strategic master could've designed it. She can't help but adore it, it's almost fantastical when seen for real and not on a screen; she can see why people die for this place.

It's a wonderful. Full of strange, impossible things that elude her understanding and a sort of determined hopefulness than floats in the air. The village brims with a powerful aura of grit, fire and dreams that seems to seep into every brick and the mere suggestion of it makes Moriko think of the famed Will of Fire.

As well as the village, she's also been able to get her first look at shinobi, flitting from roof to roof like deadly birds of prey. Their flak jackets make them unmistakeable and they run through the village at speeds that make her eyes bug out, their movements faster than she ever thought possible. They dart over coloured tiles and hang sideways from walls and make everything seem just a little surreal.

Well _more_ surreal anyway.

Her mother has also made a point of taking her around the clan, which is how she's become so familiar with the compound. The Senju clan is surprisingly large and she it blows her mind a little to think of all the cousins, aunts, uncles and grandparents she now has. Coming from a family where her only extended relatives were her dad's parents, it was all at once both exciting and highly intimidating to learn that there were all these people that were _family_ now.

Moriko had quickly found out though that she had no idea what to do with her new family and struggled to interact with the other toddlers and children of the clan _(which might've been because she wasn't one, but, semantics)_. This was kind of a problem considering how close knit the Senju appeared to be; every time she and Aiko walked down the compounds streets, greetings by name were called and cheerily returned as she was introduced to yet _another_ random relative.

One of the quirks that Moriko had noticed though was that the Senju clan lacked any distinctive features -nothing quite like the Uzumaki or the Hyuuga anyway- and instead, everyone she'd seen had had a sort of earthy, grounded look about them. Brown and amber eyes and hair, with the occasional bright silver like her mother's, but nothing quite like the Yamanaka's blond or the Uchiha's signature prettiness. She had supposed, upon meeting them all, that this was most likely due to both intra-clan marriage and a lack of any real kekkai genkai, but had shuddered slightly at all the evidence for the poorly concealed incest common in this world.

But, she figured, as long as they didn't expect her to marry some random cousin, she could learn to ignore it.

 _(Even if it really,_ really _weirded her out, I mean_ wereherparentscousins _!?_

 _She bats the thought aside rather desperately, to be a child of some close form of incest is_ not _what she wants from this new life.)_

Rather by coincidence, she's also managed to find out how the Senju were all still around anyway. It had come from a disgruntled clan elder that her mother had taken her to see, one of those old enough to remember when the village was new and the Senju still trained for war.

It had been one of the village's rare rainy days about two months ago, the sky had been a dull monochrome and the rain had fallen straight down in heavy, cold drops from the heavens. Hiroto had been out again, saying goodbye to both his wife and daughter earlier that morning as he'd rushed out of the house in a set of sturdy clothes with his long hair pulled up in a high tail.

This sort of ritual tended to happen every morning, her father leaving the house in various stages of rushed while her mother puttered around their small kitchen humming and Moriko sat surrounded by baby toys on the tatami floor. That morning had been no different, and she'd been busy on the floor practising her hand-eye coordination when her mama had walked over to her and tapped her head.

"Time to go, Moriko," she'd said looking down with a grin, "we have an errand to run this morning and I need to pick up some veg from the market."

Moriko had tilted her head up to look into her mama's eyes and frowned as she'd tried to puzzle over the unfamiliar word. "'Rand, Mama?" she'd said, stumbling a little over the pronunciation.

"E-rrand, Sweetheart," Aiko'd replied, enunciating the word clearly so she could hear the individual sounds, "it means we've got a job to do today," she'd said, smiling.

Moriko had nodded, big brown eyes narrowing as she'd tried to figure out the meaning of Aiko's words. Japanese still tripped her up, even after months, but she could understand the general gist of most words and phrases, even if some of the subtleties of conversation still passed her by.

It was annoying, sure, but she was still ecstatic that she could understood as much as she did, Japanese was a bloody hard language.

Her mother had leaned down to pick her up, "Come on then, monster," she'd sighed, "let's get you ready to go," she'd finished, walking over toward the stairs.

A little later they'd been wandering down the muddy paths of the compound deep into the heart of the clan's forest. The dense foliage of the trees had made the rain sparse and uneven and Moriko had stared from her buggy at the sight with focused, curious eyes. Her eyesight had been _almost_ perfect by this point, close still better than far, but nearly as good as she'd remembered it being before. It made the spectacle around her that much more enthralling, and she'd delighted in not only the view, but her ability to see it.

This had been the first time she'd been to this particular part of the compound, further into the forest than most of the clan's homes and past some rather ornate buildings that she'd suspected were old shrines. It had been darker, the trees pushed and twisted together like the limbs of a misshapen beast and heavy with such age and quiet presence that she'd fancied she could feel it, winding through the forest in an alien song.

Aiko had passed the journey by pointing out the various types of trees and shrubs and giving a running commentary on what each was used for and their symbolic meaning _(Oak for stability, drums and buildings: Cedar for eternity, antiseptic and the lungs: Yew for regeneration, poison and the liver)._ She'd idly wondered if all Konoha children were taught about the forests, or whether it was just a Senju thing.

Either way it had been an interesting way to pass the time, she'd learnt some basic botany and had gotten to expand her vocabulary.

Before long though they'd reached the end of the path and another old house, tucked away in the shadows of two enormous trees. It had been just like the other ones, same design, building style and weathered interlocking wooden beams, except this one had felt slightly _odd_. It had had a strangeness about it, a weird sort of itchy feeling that had prodded at her chakra with uncomfortable, searching fingers.

She'd eyed the house with nervous trepidation, no other house in the compound had felt as vaguely threatening as this one, a raspy whisper at the back of her mind that clearly said _back off!_ There hadn't _seemed_ to be anything off with it, it had looked perfectly normal, but for some reason she just hadn't trusted it.

Aiko pulled up her buggy a good few metres away from the house and moved to stand beside it, "Crazy old Bat," she'd muttered to herself, staring at the house.

Moriko had spun her head around to look at Aiko and raised her eyebrows in surprise, _just who were they visiting?_ So far her mother had been _painfully_ polite to everyone, even the most irritating of the clan members they'd run into; she'd never voiced a complaint, never insulted anyone and _certainly_ had never made disparaging comments about people behind their backs. Aiko was almost irritatingly nice.

 _So who did this house belong to_? Moriko had thought, turning her eyes back to said house.

Aiko had then reached up behind her head and pulled out one of the pins holding back her long hair; twisting the spherical end of it, she'd removed the orbed edge to reveal a razor-sharp point.

 _What!?_ Moriko had thought, shocked, _since when did her mother carry anything resembling a weapon!?_

Studying Aiko intently, she'd watched as she'd exhaled a deep, pained sigh and dug the sharp edge into the tip of her forefinger, pressing down until a delicate drop of bright crimson had beaded up in the new wound. Observing it with a sort of bored carelessness, Aiko had then placed the hairpin between her teeth and turned her finger until the cut was facing the ground, she had then squeezed it so more blood had welled to the surface and, becoming too heavy for gravity, fallen to forest floor.

And then… _wow._

As soon as her mother's blood had touched the sodden ground it had lit up iridescent. Swooping curves of glowing swirls had rippled outwards from the place the blood had hit the ground and spread out in a wave of polychromatic light, covering the ground surrounding the house for several metres in every direction.

Moriko had let out a tiny gasp of stunned awe and Aiko had chuckled upon hearing it. _Was that?...No, it couldn't be…_

She had tried in vain study the shimmering whorls on the ground, but the bright lights had made it impossible to get a proper read on the symbols. What she had gotten, however, was the faintest impression of unintelligible squiggles interspersed with glittering kanji. But as quickly as it appeared, the light had retreated up to the house, and was gone.

She had whipped head around to look up at her mama, "Mama, wha…?" she had breathed.

Her mama had rolled her eyes and given her a sideways glance, "Paranoia, that's what."

 _Para…noia?_ She had thought, rolling the new word around in her mind until she could almost taste it on her tongue. But before she could decipher the meaning, Aiko had returned to the back of the buggy and begun to push it up the path towards the house.

Moriko's trepidation about the house had returned in full force by the time they'd reached the door and she had been very nearly afraid of what she would find behind the wooden frame. She'd craned her neck back to stare up at her mother's face for reassurance, but all she'd found there was a tight look of determined reluctance where Aiko's face had looked as though she had been torn between going forward or turning away and forgetting about the house.

 _Just who lived here?_

Taking one last deep sigh, and shaking herself over as if waking from a trance, her mother had walked over to the door and knocked.

"Kiyomi-obāsama!" she'd called out, "it's Aiko!"

From inside the house there had been a muffled thump as if someone had dropped something and then the sounds of muted cursing. Moriko had looked curiously at the door and then at her mother, who had pulled herself straight and taut and set her face as though bracing for something. After a few moments of shuffling and more cursing, the door had slid open to reveal a short, wrinkled old lady.

She had been diminutive and small, with fine white hair pulled into a strict bun and a pair of sharp brown eyes. She'd been dressed in a dark green yukata with a pair of white tabi socks and ribbons of bandages wound around her aged arms. Her face had been lined, deep age-struck crevasse crawling out from around her eyes and a jagged looking gash had split her face diagonally from top to bottom, as if someone had tried to slice right through her skull. Her body had been whipcord thin, her stance upright and immovable and through the sleeves of her yukata, the sculpted lines of muscle could be made out in the rounded silhouettes of her arms.

 _Dangerous_ , Moriko's mind had whispered.

It was true. For all her age, this Kiyomi-obāsama had looked deadly; with piercing, analytical eyes and a tenseness in her body that had looked like she'd been ready to spring. Moriko had had no doubt that this was a Senju kunoichi, and a powerful one at that.

The woman had taken one looked at Aiko with her intense, brown eyes and barked "Well don't just stand there, girl! Come on in! It's wet and the damp's not good for my bones!"

Moriko had blinked up at her, not quite sure what to make of the situation and the woman had looked down at her with a fierce scowl, "And bring the brat too," she'd said, "but leave the that filthy thing outside," she'd finished, using a gnarled, scarred hand to indicate the buggy, before turning around and shuffling back into her house.

 _Well, that was odd_ , she'd thought and looked back over to her mother, whose had been busy grinding her teeth into oblivion. Aiko had then closed her eyes and taken a calm, centring breath, tilting her head up to the heavens as if in prayer and then had turned to her with a sour expression, her mouth shaped as if she'd tasted something unpleasant. "Come on, Moriko," she'd muttered almost to herself as she'd lifted her from the buggy and placed her on her hip, "the sooner we get this over with, the sooner we can leave."

Aiko had then manoeuvred the buggy so it was pressed up against the wall, under the awning to protect it from the rain, and lifted a wicker basket from the back of it. Balancing both Moriko and the basket on one arm, she'd bent down to slip off both her shoes, and given Moriko once last grim expression before stepping inside.

It was surprisingly light inside and, Moriko had noted, it didn't look much different from her own home: simply decorated by traditional art pieces with shoji doors and tatami mats. Where they differed however, was that this house had felt wider, with more room and a sense of lightness and space that her own home lacked. She'd supposed that this had been because the house was more traditional, rather than the mismatch of old and new that hers was.

They'd followed Kiyomi-obāsama to a wide spacious room, sparsely decorated with a single chabudai and a few scattered green zabuton cushions. Kiyomi'd gestured for Aiko to take the seat nearest to the tokonoma in a rather baffling display of respect while she'd sunk down with an ease belaying her age on the cushion across the table from her.

Her mother had placed her basket down to her right and Moriko on the cushion to her left before gracefully lowering herself into a picture perfect seiza, crossing her hands gracefully over her lap.

Her mother and Kiyomi-obāsama had sat there for a few silent moments, the rain pounding rhythmically on the wooden roof of the house and the air between them still. Moriko had gotten a rather confusing sense that this was a sort of battle between the two of them: a small, petty form of challenge between her carefully dainty mother and this old, battered kunoichi, a routine apparently repeated enough for the whole situation to seem practiced and familiar. Her mother's face had been pleasantly placid and Kiyomi-obāsama's had been the same, but eventually the stillness had been shattered and the old woman had rearranged her legs before sighing. "What are you here for, Aiko-chan?" in a rather put-upon manner.

A small flash of victory had shone briefly in her mother's eyes and the corner of her mouth had quirked up in a tiny triumphant smirk before her face had quickly resumed its mask of calm. "Your medicine, Obāsama," she'd said, reaching to place the basket on the table.

The old kunoichi had looked at the basket with utter disgust before grabbing it and snorting, "Medicine! Bah! More like poison! Those incompetent idiots on the clan council are trying to do me in again!"

Aiko had violently rolled her eyes; a gesture that had both shocked and amused Moriko, seeing her polite mother behave so obviously disrespectfully towards an elder, and she'd wondered what exactly was between these two. "Of course it is, Obāsama, it couldn't _possibly_ be anything else," she'd replied was a sort of absent sarcasm. Kiyomi had simply shot her a dark glower in return as she'd rifled through the contents of the basket, an oddly juvenile expression for a woman so old.

Moriko'd watched the whole exchange with a bewildered curiosity from her place on her cushion, her brown eyes staring with a focus abnormal in an infant and her ears straining to hear and understand the conversation. From what she'd manged to get, her mother had an openly antagonistic relationship with this woman, which was, well, funny really.

It had been then that Kiyomi had noticed her staring and quirked an eyebrow at her in response, the wrinkles in her forehead deepening. "So this is your brat then?" she'd said, talking to Aiko but still looking at her.

It had been a strange sensation, being studied like that; the old woman had looked at her with unerring focus, her intense brown eyes studying her with a contemplative cunning that had been unnerving to say the least. Moriko had felt like she was being more closely examined than she'd ever been in both her lives.

Kiyomi's eyes had roved over her features and small body before turning back to Aiko with a satisfied nod, "Looks like Hiroto and his father when they were babies," she'd said.

Her mother had smiled softly, her whole body relaxing as she'd turned to Moriko and ran a light hand over her head, stroking her hair. "Yes, the council thought so too," she'd said, lightly tapping Moriko on the nose, making her wrinkle it involuntarily, "although I'd like to there's a bit of me in there too," she'd hummed.

Kiyomi-obāsama had snorted at that, loud and derogatory, "Ha! You?" she'd laughed, "No, this one's strong!" she'd declared, offering Moriko an almost proud look, "Look at her eyes, more steel and cleverness in them now than you've ever possessed. This one'll be a kunoichi, Aiko-chan, you mark my words!"

Moriko had felt something swell in her at those words, a curious sensation of pride and fear. She had gained something precious then she'd felt, a validation for her personal resolve to become as strong as she could to protect herself and those around her. She had gained the confidence and blessings of a women who had lived and bled for the clan and her village, so certain she would do the same. She'd felt herself soften towards the older women a little, a warm, happy glow purring contentedly in her chest and she'd unconsciously sat up a little straighter.

But at the same time something in the back of her mind shrunk away in anxious fear because _how did the women know?_ What could Kiyomi-obāsama see in her eyes that made her see a baby as a kunoichi and would others see it too?

The comment had seemed to have to opposite effect on her mother though who had abruptly stiffened and pulled a face as if she'd swallowed a fly.

"No," she'd stated firmly, her grey eyes metallic and sharp, "I will not be sending my daughter to die on some battlefield for no reason."

Moriko had started at that and swung her head around to stare at her mother in astonishment. What did she mean _no?_ Wasn't her mother a Senju? Weren't the Senju a ninja clan? Wouldn't her mother be _proud_ to have a shinobi daughter? But the amount of pure venom and disgust her mother had inserted into that pronouncement said otherwise and the way her knuckles had gripped the table so hard they had been white told another story.

Kiyomi-obāsama too, had become rigid, her face going taut and the scar slashed across it growing more pronounced as her eyes darkened. "Careful, Aiko-chan," she'd said, softly, dangerously, "It almost sounds like you don't appreciate the sacrifices the brave men and women of this village have made."

Her mother had scowled at that, an expression unsuited to her delicate face and her eyes had flashed, "No, you misunderstand me, Obāsama," she'd returned, "I have every respect for the shinobi of our forces but if you think I'm going to let _my daughter_ turn into a paranoid wreck for this village then you have another thing coming," she'd spat.

Kiyomi'd had leant forward then, bracing her hands on the table and snarling, "Your daughter is a Senju! Not just any Senju, a Senju of the main house! To be ninja is in her blood!"

"And?" her mother had questioned imperiously, sitting straight and elegant, looking every inch a princess, "So what if it's in her blood? It's in everyone in the clan's blood and they're not shinobi."

Kiyomi's face had twisted then, a dark expression creeping at her features and she'd run an absent hand across her scar, "Oh, I know," she'd growled, "I've seen what the clan has become, a bunch of clueless, weak _civilians,_ " she'dspat, as if it was a curse. "Tobirama-sama would be rolling in his grave if he could see us now, the greatest of the shinobi clans and the only ninja we have to offer is a cowardly _drunk_."

Her mother's face was stone, "Tsunade-sama's lost both her brother and husband, she has a right to her grief," she had replied lowly.

Kiyomi-obāsama scoffed, "And haven't we all lost, Aiko-chan? I've lost my husband and all three of my sons to this village and you don't see me running off and wasting the clan's money on booze and betting. Plenty of people have lost their siblings and partners but do they run? No. They stay and face their pain and they make sure their sacrifices _were worth it._ "

Her mother had sneered at this, "If you've lost so much for the village why do you expect me to do the same? I, at least, refuse to open myself to the same loss, to throw my daughter to the wolves for _clan_ _pride._ "

Moriko had stared wide-eyed at her mother, the pure vitriol spilling from her mouth had been carelessly cruel and her eyes had been frozen and dark. But she could understand exactly where she was coming from. If she had been a mother, _no way_ would she have sent her children to train to be child soldiers, to be _proud_ as they went off to die. But Moriko couldn't allow herself the luxury of agreeing with her mother, couldn't let herself live the safe civilian life her mother apparently wanted for her. She _had_ to be a ninja otherwise she would _die,_ they all would. She had to have even the _slightest_ chance of protecting her family form the dangers ahead.

But Kiyomi-obāsama appeared to be at the end of her restraint. "We are Senju!" she had pretty much exploded, the rage seeping from her pores and evident in the tense set of her limbs and wild eyes, "We built this village with our blood and by the gods, we should defend it! You may not remember the world before the village, Aiko-chan, but I do: the corpses, the violence, the endless war. It was hell on earth."

"Yes," Aiko had snarled, "I know. But the world isn't like that anymore, we have a peaceful home and secure lives now. The Senju no longer need to die by the dozen on some battlefield, we aren't ninja because _we_ _don't_ _need_ _to_ _be._ "

"Oh, _piss on that!_ Since when? If you haven't noticed we've just come out of a war, Aiko-chan, _we don't need to be ninja?_ Ridiculous. The Uchiha, at least, have the right of it, most of them are ninja; talented, highly trained ones." Kiyomi had shaken her head, "Tobirama-sama would be horrified, the Uchiha strong and able while the Senju sit here weak."

"The Uchiha are a bunch of overly paranoid arseholes who continue to be ungrateful for the peace the village has given them, I don't see why we should seek to emulate them," her mother had snapped.

"Yes, well, on that at least, we agree, but at least they can field a fighting force," Kiyomi had retorted.

Her mother had stood up suddenly at this, a tense snarl on her face. "I've given you your medicine, my job is done. We will be leaving now," she'd said tightly.

"Oh, run away, Aiko-chan, run back to your safe house and perfect life, I tire of this argument," Kiyomi had said before getting to her feet, "I no longer have need of you."

Her mother had shot one last sneer at the old kunoichi before hoisting Moriko into her arms and storming out of the house.

Moriko had thought about that argument between her mother and Kiyomi-obāsama all the way back to the house and it had continued to plague her even now.

It makes her concerned for her future, for the decisions she must make and how those will hurt those close to her.

She loves her new mother, loves her fiercely; wants to hold on tight to the warm glow she gives her and keep it forever safe. Moriko loves the tender smiles directed her way, the never-ending encouragement and pride, the determined affection and warm arms that cradled her during the dark weeks of her grief.

Aiko's obvious hate for the thought of her one day becoming a shinobi worries her, clouds what should be a clear path in her mind with curdling doubt. She _cannot_ let her mother hold her back from that path, _cannot_ let her stop her from growing strong. But at the same time she knows her mother is very obviously _never_ going to let her become a ninja, can't even stand the mere suggestion of it. Moriko has no idea where such vicious refusal came from, maybe someone close to her died in the past: a friend, a sibling, a lover.

Moriko can't let it affect her.

She has to become a ninja, absolutely _has_ to. She can't be helpless again, _won't_ be helpless again. Can't go through another death, can't stomach the thought of losing it all over again. In this, her mother's feelings are irrelevant. Moriko knows what is coming and she needs to be able to defend herself _and_ her family. The thought of her kind, swanlike mother buried and broken under a mountain of rubble makes her stomach twist and bile rise to her throat. Civilians are just so _weak,_ she'd seen that during the Kyuubi attack, felt the cold weight of her own terror and seen the bodies of fleeing villagers crushed under the crowd. She can't let that be her when Orochimaru invades, or Pein attacks.

She'll break her mother's heart when the time comes, shatter it; she knows she will and the thought of it makes her want to cry. When she'd been Josephine her mum had been her closest companion, her best friend; she'd shared all her dreams and secrets with her and she'd been her fiercest defender. The idea of not having that with Aiko this time around is almost unthinkable.

But as much she wants to _(because the idea of fighting, of killing and dancing close to the edges of that terrible void is still so, so terrifying)_ she just can't abide by her mother's wishes and live a safe, civilian life.

She sighs softly and turns to look up at her mama's soft, open face, illuminated by the morning glow and memorises the curve of her jaw and the slant of her small nose. There would be arguments when she was old enough, terrible angry ones, but at least she had several years to wear her down.

She frowns though, staring at her mother's face: the clear, blemish-free skin and the corner of her quicksilver eyes. Her mama's opinions hadn't been the only thing that had bothered her, the state of the clan had too.

From what she'd understood the clan was basically all civilians now, with only Tsunade a trained shinobi. But why? Her mother had seemed to believe it was because they were safe now living in the village; that the Senju no longer _needed_ to become ninja. Was this the long-term effect of Hashirama's dreams of peace? Did the Senju who founded the village believe in the safety of it and the Shodai's dream so much that they didn't see the point in training their children? That didn't seem likely.

It might have been the next generation though, Moriko supposes, the children of those who had grown up safe in the village encouraging their own children to seek different paths.

It's all so confusing, Moriko thinks, struggling to rationalise her mother's opinions -so different to those portrayed in the manga or anime- and the state of the Senju. Her new clan is perplexing and their decline almost worryingly odd. It is the decline of a clan so powerful that only the Uchiha could match them, a clan so strong that they could ally with their enemies, build a village and _demand_ peace from the rest of the world. It just seemed so unlikely that they could all turn around one day and decide not to fight anymore.

She sighs again, louder this time and her mother turns her head to face her. "That's a large sigh for such a small person, Moriko," her mother says with a small smile, "Are we thinking deep thoughts this morning?"

Moriko huffs and scowls, "S'confusin'," she mutters with a pout.

"What is, darling?" her mama asks with a humouring expression.

"World," she returns succinctly, not really possessing the words to express the full extent of her feeling in Japanese, and not willing to shock Aiko too much by proceeding to discuss clan politics with her.

Aiko chuckles and gives her an affectionate peck on the cheek, "Of course it is, sweetheart, but hopefully it will get less with time," she answers. "Speaking of time," she says, turning back to look to the clock on the wall, "we need to get you ready, big party today for the birthday girl!"

Moriko briefly starts, her eyes growing wide. _Wait_ , _birthday_? Huh, well, that's news to her. She frowns and purses her lip as she considers the implications of that, her expression unintentionally adorable. So, she's been here a year? Odd, it had seemed like so much longer. Moriko takes a moment to think about how bizarre it is that this time last year she'd been on the way back from her grandparents, completely unassuming and unknowing of what was to come.

She feels a sharp jolt lance through her as she remembers it, the mulled wine and gossip, the careless, innocent pleasure she took at spending time with her family. The grief that accompanies that reminiscence is still there, even after a year; the sharp aching pang of _loss_. It's muted now though, not so raw: it's no longer beating heart of every waking moment.

It makes her feel sad that, an indescribable melancholy that makes her yearn not just for the life she's lost, but also the pain of losing it. She's moving on, she supposes, becoming a part of this new life. But it makes her feel guilty, guilty for forgetting the people she's left behind and the horrible pain of doing so. It creeps up on her when she least expects in and spends whole days crying pitiful into the soft pillows in her cot

She feels sad for herself, for the Josephine of yesterday, the Moriko of then and for the Moriko of now.

Aiko catches her saddened face and frowns, stroking her cheek, "Hey, what's that frown for? Today is a good day, it's not every day you turn one."

Moriko forces a smile onto her face and leans up to kiss her mother, just because she can, and buries her face in her neck, suddenly shy, "Jus' tired, Mama," she mumbles into Aiko's perfumed skin and closes her eyes.

"Oh?" her mother chuckles, "Well, monster, can't stay tired for long, all your cousins are coming round to celebrate today!"

Moriko's eyes snap open and she's immediately alert.

 _Oh no._


End file.
